[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 29 (Wednesday, February 14, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H589-H591]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FIRSTENERGY INDICTMENTS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from
Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for 5 minutes.
Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, I rise today to highlight significant
developments in the ongoing commercial nuclear energy scandal in Ohio,
the worst in U.S. history.
It involves FirstEnergy Corporation's conspiracy, wire fraud, and
bribery of the highest level of Ohio public officials in return for a
legislative bailout of its flagging nuclear plants.
Bribed public officials made sure that the company's debts were
dumped on the public as they violated public safety time and again.
This past Friday, a Summit County, Ohio, grand jury returned the
indictments against the former CEO of FirstEnergy, the former
FirstEnergy senior vice president of external affairs, and the former
chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, each for multiple
felonies related to their alleged roles in the largest public
corruption scandal in Ohio's history.
The indictments by the Summit County prosecutor and Ohio's Attorney
General aim to bring these corrupt, unethical, and dangerous--yes,
dangerous--individuals to justice.
Driven by greed and self-interest, FirstEnergy not only compromised
the Ohio State legislature and its top leaders in other critical public
institutions--they were responsible for severely mismanaging time and
again the operations of inherently dangerous nuclear assets.
Madam Speaker, I include in the Record an article by Toledo Blade
columnist Tom Henry dating back to 2003, following another dangerous
incident at that plant, quoting nuclear Navy retired Admiral Joe
Williams.
[From the Toledo Blade, Sept. 22, 2003]
Ex-Official at Besse Links Woes, Managers
(By Tom Henry)
Retired U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Joe Williams, Jr., who guided
Davis-Besse back to service after it was crippled more than
18 months in the mid-1980s, has told The Blade he offered in
2002 to come back and help guide the troubled nuclear plant
back into service again.
But FirstEnergy Corp. declined, saying it would keep the
project ``in-house,'' according to Mr. Williams.
Now 81 and a resident of an independent living facility in
Kennett Square, Pa., near Wilmington, Del., Mr. Williams said
he is as strong in his conviction about what needs to be done
at Davis-Besse as he was when he was paid $1,500 a day to
straighten things out with his no-nonsense approach--one
which, as recently as a congressional hearing last fall, has
been recalled with admiration by some former employees.
``When I left, I had a crew of the best plant engineers,''
Mr. Williams said while claiming that many of his efforts
have been undone by a profit-over-safety mentality that some
people feel has been the hallmark of the deregulation era of
the 1990s.
``Like all plants, when they decided they wanted to make a
cash cow out of [Davis-Besse], they neglected maintenance. If
they would just learn that the only way you make money from a
nuclear plant is by keeping it online. And the only way you
keep it online is with safe production,'' he said.
Richard Wilkins, FirstEnergy spokesman, said he is not
aware of any discussions to bring back the retired vice
admiral in 2002.
The hiring of Mr. Williams often has been cited as one of
the key moves Toledo Edison Co., now a FirstEnergy
subsidiary, made in response to its June 9, 1985, incident at
Davis-Besse, when a series of pumps and valves failed and
caused a temporary loss of coolant water to the reactor core.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has described that
incident and the near-rupture of Davis-Besse's reactor head,
discovered in March, 2002, as two of the nation's biggest
nuclear episodes since the Three Mile Island accident of
1979. The two near-mishaps have resulted in the two longest
outages in the plant's history, both in excess of 560 days.
Although the issues are different, Mr. Williams said he
sees similarities. He said an underlying problem for years at
Davis-Besse has been a general reluctance of employees to
come forth with problems they find. Part of the problem these
days is a greater reliance on contractors, he said.
``They need to rectify that right now. They need to get a
staff that's company people and can do their jobs. Go to the
expense of hiring good people,'' Mr. Williams said.
Mr. Williams, a former commander of the U.S. Atlantic
submarine fleet and the NATO submarine fleet, did just that
in 1985. Shortly after he was brought in on June 18 of that
[[Page H590]]
year--a mere nine days after the near-accident occurred--he
took the helm under the title of senior vice president in
charge of nuclear operations and was given wide latitude in
decisions. Among other things, Davis-Besse's manpower was
expanded to 890 employees, up from 644. Salaries were boosted
to attract talent. There was less reliance on contractors.
``They need to get back to what we were doing in 1987,''
Mr. Williams said. After leaving in the spring of that year,
he garnered a rate of $2,000 a day as an expert witness in
court cases involving nuclear plants. Discussions about his
coming back to Davis-Besse in 2002 never got serious enough
for a fee to be discussed, he said.
But he told The Blade he was absolutely serious about
returning. ``I'm capable of coming out there and getting that
[facility] back online,'' he said.
Mr. Williams said the reactor head would not have become so
dilapidated if he had heard about the containment air filters
getting clogged by rust every other day, a telltale sign of a
problem that had gone on for nearly 18 months.
FirstEnergy claimed it did not make a connection between
rusty filters and a problem inside the containment building.
Such filters are normally changed once a month.
``I would have shut the plant down. That's criminal. No
system engineer could have possibly, possibly supported
[continued operation],'' Mr. Williams said.
``I'll tell you one thing: if my filters had those
problems, I would have ripped the insulation off that head
[and looked for corrosion],'' he added.
As it turned out, the corrosion--the worst in U.S. nuclear
history--left a football-shaped cavity in the reactor head.
All that was left in that spot was a liner that was less than
three-eighths of an inch thick and not designed to hold back
the reactor's enormous pressure.
Mr. Williams said he is familiar with a U.S. Department of
Labor complaint filed by former Davis-Besse engineer Andrew
Siemaszko, who has sought federal whistleblower protection on
the grounds he was illegally fired by FirstEnergy in
September, 2002. Mr. Siemaszko alleges his termination stems
from his insistence on having expensive maintenance done on
each of the plant's four reactor coolant pumps.
The Siemaszko case, dismissed in June and now on appeal,
claims that FirstEnergy knowingly operated Davis-Besse for
years with a severely rusted head. Among other things, the
complaint states that scaffolding was removed one night
during an outage in 2000 without Mr. Siemaszko's consent,
abruptly ending his efforts to clean the head weeks before
the job could be completed.
``I think the kid was right,'' Mr. Williams said, referring
to Mr. Siemaszko. ``I don't know how many of them [in
FirstEnergy] out there ought to be hung.''
Mr. Williams said he is interested in the outcome of an
investigation into possible criminal activity being headed by
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Office of Investigations.
The results, which have not yet been made public, could be
turned over to the U.S. Department of Justice for
prosecution.
Certain FirstEnergy officials ``ought to go to jail,'' Mr.
Williams said. ``There have been enough deliberate acts of
management in terms of denial,'' he said.
Mr. Wilkins said FirstEnergy has addressed most of the
concerns cited by the NRC, including problems with Davis-
Besse's safety culture.
Recent surveys show employees weren't afraid to come
forward but had been reluctant to do so because they felt
management had for years stopped taking their concerns
seriously, Mr. Wilkins said.
He said he can't comment on what would have occurred had
Mr. Williams been in charge while the problems with the rusty
air filters came to light.
``We noted in our root cause report that the air filters
were one of several missed opportunities,'' Mr. Wilkins said,
saying plant officials simply failed to recognize it as a
symptom of a problem.
Ms. KAPTUR. Admiral Williams strongly condemned the malfeasance and
nuclear endangerment attendant to the top managers and corporate
chieftains, and that kept on year after year after year.
As I have cautioned before, corporate nuclear culture influences
safety culture. We need only look at the troubled history of multiple
major nuclear safety violations and criminal conduct at FirstEnergy's
Davis-Besse nuclear plant in our district for evidence of this
relationship. It is a sad story for America.
One must ask whether and how the fines and penalties at FirstEnergy
and its subsidiary, Energy Harbor, have had to pay to avoid criminal
and civil trials.
How will America deter future misconduct by the commercial nuclear
power energy companies? Federal regulators didn't do their job.
What is clear is that more justice must be achieved to make Ohio
ratepayers and our communities safe and whole again.
A class action suit settled by FirstEnergy in August of last year
netted payments to individual ratepayers--get ready--a mere $10 to $20.
Moreover, Ohio consumers continue to subsidize FirstEnergy's
antiquated coal-fired power plants even outside Ohio under the portion
of HB6 that passed the State legislature that has yet to be repealed.
Another casualty is the local school district in Oak Harbor, Ohio,
where the Davis-Besse plant is located. It continues to suffer millions
and millions of dollars of tax losses due to the incremental
devaluation of the plant's public utility property values over the
years.
I continue to urge the State legislature, State and Federal
prosecutors, and State and Federal regulators to take bold action.
Let's right these wrongs, and let's assure Federal authorities
achieve safe, clean, modern, and responsible nuclear energy production
in Ohio and in this country. This slipshod, corrupt nuclear energy must
never, ever, ever happen in America again.
Madam Speaker, I include in the Record an article from The Blade
titled: ``Reactor Near to a Dismal Record.''
[From the Toledo Blade, Aug. 31, 2003]
Reactor Near to a Dismal Record
(By Tom Henry)
Still defending itself from allegations that it may have
caused the nation's worst blackout, FirstEnergy Corp. is
about to break the previous record for futility at Davis-
Besse.
On Wednesday, Davis-Besse will have sat idle for 565 days,
setting a plant record for consecutive days without producing
electricity. The previous record was 564 consecutive days
between June 9, 1985, and Christmas Day, 1986.
The cost of the current outage is more than $500 million,
and is starting to approach the $642 million price tag that
it cost to build the plant in 1977.
The 1985-86 shutdown occurred after a series of pumps and
valves failed, causing a loss of coolant water to the reactor
core of the plant. In circumstances that sound strikingly
similar to the current shutdown, the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission referred to the 1985 accident as the worst since
Three Mile Island in 1979. It resulted in an extensive
investigation into the operation and management of the plant,
30 miles east of Toledo near Oak Harbor.
Although then-operator Toledo Edison Co. restarted the
plant on Dec. 22, 1986, the reactor ``tripped'' and shut down
after several hours without producing electricity. Three days
later, operators restarted the plant on Christmas Day, 1986,
and achieved enough power so that electricity could be
produced, ending the consecutive-day shutdown streak at 564
days.
However, Davis-Besse continued to struggle with shutdowns
on and off into early January, 1987.
The current shutdown began February 16, 2002, as a normal
refueling and maintenance outage. NRC staff wanted
FirstEnergy to move up the refueling from its scheduled date
in March, 2002, to late fall 2001 so that a check could be
conducted on control rod nozzles for cracks like those found
at a South Carolina plant with a similar pressurized water
design.
But FirstEnergy balked and the NRC decided to allow
FirstEnergy to keep the plant in operation until February
16--only about a month earlier than the originally scheduled
outage.
After Davis-Beese was shut down, plant officials found that
boric acid had leaked through flanges atop the reactor head
and ate a half-foot hole in the carbon steel of the reactor
head.
Only a layer of stainless steel three-eighths of an inch
thick prevented the pressure of radioactive steam inside the
reactor from leaking into the containment building. The NRC
called the corrosion the worst it had ever seen and launched
an investigation into what went wrong.
FirstEnergy originally announced plans to return the plant
to service in April, 2002, but that date has repeatedly been
pushed back in response to the discovery of other problems
and NRC scrutiny--such as concerns about the safety culture
among management and employees at the plant.
There is a sense of deja vu for some NRC and Davis-Besse
officials when it comes to the two extended shutdowns and the
issues of plant management and regulatory oversight:
During both outages, the workplace environment has been
questioned. ``What was really necessary was a change in
attitude, a change in management style,'' Joe Williams, Jr.,
Toledo Edison Co.'s senior vice president of nuclear
operations, was quoted as saying about the 1985 incident in
the fall of 1986. ``A lot of the problems went back to Day
One.''
The deep cavity found in Davis-Besse's reactor head has
been likewise attributed by the NRC to a lack of questioning
attitude on behalf of FirstEnergy management and its
workforce.
Although FirstEnergy has replaced the reactor head with an
unused head from a Michigan plant, the NRC has become so
concerned about the company's attention to detail that it has
subjected the plant to only
[[Page H591]]
its second formal ``safety culture'' review. The only other
site to have undergone such a review is the Millstone nuclear
plant in Connecticut, where NRC officials have said they
believe workers were harassed and intimidated if they tried
to report problems.
FirstEnergy is to make a lengthy presentation about its
progress September 18 at the NRC's Midwest regional office in
Lisle, Ill. The agency will take FirstEnergy's presentation
under consideration, then hold at least one more meeting on
the topic to give the company feedback before restart, Jan
Strasma, NRC spokesman, said.
During both outages, the NRC has had its own credibility
questioned by members of Congress and other high-powered
officials in Washington.
U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo), after hearing about
the reactor head corrosion 18 months ago, questioned the
capability of the NRC, an agency she accused of being weak
and ineffective with its handling of Davis-Besse's 1985
incident. Although Miss Kaptur called for Davis-Besse to be
shut permanently in 2002, she has not been as outspoken in
recent months as has U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D.,
Cleveland).
Earlier this year, Congressman Kucinich petitioned the NRC
to revoke FirstEnergy's operating license at Davis-Besse.
More recently, in response to finger-pointing alleging
FirstEnergy may have responsibility for the nation's worst
blackout, he petitioned the Public Utilities Commission of
Ohio to revoke the utility's right to do business in Ohio.
A long paper trail of records reviewed by The Blade shows
others have shared their skepticism about Davis-Besse.
A 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-Besse's auxiliary feed-water system
had been reported by 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.
In April, 1987, former U.S. Sen. John Glenn (D., Ohio)
introduced a bill that ultimately led to the creation of the
NRC's Office of Inspector General. Senator Glenn said at the
time that the NRC is ``supposed to be a watchdog, not a
lapdog.''
Earlier this year, that same Office of Inspector General
accused the NRC of putting profits ahead of safety when it
allowed Davis-Besse to wait until February, 2002, to shut
down for refueling and the safety inspection for control rod
cracks.
Former NRC Chairman Richard Meserve vehemently denied that
charge.
George Mulley, the inspector general's senior level
assistant for investigative operations, told The Blade that a
follow-up probe into the NRC's oversight performance at
Davis-Besse will likely be released this month.
Part of the criticism the NRC received following its 1985-
86 probe of Davis-Besse stemmed from its decision to back off
from a proposed $900,000 fine against Toledo Edison.
The agency originally said it would impose the penalty
because of a ``long history of ineffective and inadequate
attention and direction in the operation and maintenance of
the Davis-Besse facility.''
But in 1987, the NRC cut the fine amount to $450,000. The
agency explained that it had changed its mind because it was
impressed by Toledo Edison's aggressiveness toward
establishing ``a long-range, in-depth corrective action
program to address the problems that existed at Davis-
Besse.''
No fine has been issued in connection with the current
problems at Davis-Besse. A decision on any civil penalty
depends on whether the NRC's Office of Investigations
believes there is evidence of criminal wrongdoing to turn
over to the Justice Department for prosecution.
``The criminal process would take precedence over the civil
process,'' Mr. Strasma said.
Although the two extended outages appear to have some
parallels in terms of oversight, the country's mood toward
nuclear power at the time they each began was likely very
different.
Early last year, in the weeks before the reactor head
corrosion was discovered at Davis-Besse, the nuclear industry
had the best reason for optimism since before the Three Mile
Island accident.
After 23 years of doldrums, nuclear energy was embraced by
the White House as a solution to energy problems. Congress in
2002 eventually eliminated one of the nuclear industry's most
nagging obstacles to expansion when it designated Nevada's
Yucca Mountain as a burial site for spent reactor fuel.
Contrast that with how most people felt about nuclear power
when Toledo Edison restarted Davis-Besse in December, 1986.
Several months earlier, on April 26, 1986, the world's worst
nuclear accident had occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear
complex near Kiev, Ukraine. Thousands died, either
immediately from the blast or from radiation-related
sicknesses in the following years.
As Davis-Besse moved closer to restart, Toledo Edison's Joe
Williams, Jr., sought to allay fears. On Sept. 7, 1986, the
retired U.S. Navy vice admiral devoted nearly an entire page
in The Blade to a 2,000-word letter in which he explained
what happened at Davis-Besse, Three Mile Island, and
Chernobyl.
``A Chernobyl simply cannot happen here for a variety of
reasons,'' Mr. Williams wrote, citing the containment at U.S.
nuclear plants among those reasons.
The hiring of Mr. Williams has been seen as one of the key
moves Toledo Edison made in response to Davis-Besse's 1985
shutdown.
A former commander of the U.S. Atlantic submarine fleet and
the NATO submarine fleet, he was brought in on June 18, 1985,
nine days after the shutdown began. He took the helm under
the title of senior vice president in charge of nuclear
operations, and was given wide latitude in decisions.
Davis-Besse's manpower was expanded to 890 employees in
1986, up from 644 in 1985. There was less reliance on
contractors.
Compare that with the current workforce at Davis-Besse,
which totals 725 full-time employees in a deregulated, more
competitive market. FirstEnergy spokesman Richard Wilkins
acknowledges there are far fewer employees today and that the
trend has been to bring in more contractors to do specialized
work.
Lew Myers, chief operating officer of FirstEnergy's nuclear
subsidiary, has told the NRC that he has put a renewed
emphasis on training.
Yet employees fear burnout: Some have privately complained
about working in excess of 72 hours a week throughout much of
the 18-month outage.
A number of key positions, including some in Davis-Besse's
engineering department, have been filled by employees from
FirstEnergy's Perry nuclear plant near Cleveland and the
Beaver Valley nuclear station at Shippingport, Pa.
Howard Whitcomb, a Toledo lawyer and former NRC resident
inspector in South Carolina who worked under Mr. Williams at
Davis-Besse after the 1985 incident, has said he believes
many of the workplace issues that exist at Davis-Besse today
would not have been tolerated under the former vice admiral's
reign.
``You've had a few really close calls at Davis-Besse,''
said Jim Riccio, Greenpeace nuclear policy analyst in
Washington, citing the two extended outages and a 1998
tornado which narrowly missed the plant.
``I'm wondering when luck is going to run out.''
____________________