The Agora

The Aug. 14 blackout that cascaded across eight U.S. states and part of Canada was largely the fault of FirstEnergy Corp. and could have been prevented, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said on Wednesday.

"One major conclusion of the interim report is that this blackout was largely preventable," Abraham said in a statement accompanying release of an investigative report prepared by a U.S.-Canadian task force.

I understand if those of you who live in New York or eastern Canada are right royally pissed at FirstEnergy, but at least you don't have to live with these clown-shoes on a daily basis.

At least you don't have to live within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant run by these wankers. You see, safety measures are nothing but a line on a budget, and to be cut whenever their fourth-rate business skill put the company into trouble.

Here is the FirstEnergy disaster story from today's Blade:

Report: Besse shutdown dodged disaster

Northern Ohio could have experienced America[base ']s worst nuclear accident during the Aug. 14 blackout if Davis-Besse had gone back into service last year with its severely corroded reactor head, a report issued yesterday by a nationally known watchdog group claims.

But the Union of Concerned Scientists, based in Cambridge, Mass., said it didn[base ']t conjure up a nightmarish scenario just for the sake of scaring people.

Its goal is to push the Nuclear Regulatory Commission into being as aggressive toward fixing long-standing design flaws at 68 other nuclear plants as it has been at Davis-Besse, David Lochbaum, the group[base ']s nuclear safety engineer, said.

"These reactors are one broken pipe away from turning this narrative into a tragic prophecy," he wrote. "Congress must ensure this clear and present danger is removed before our collective luck runs out."

Davis-Besse was taken offline for refueling Feb. 16, 2002. Three weeks later, a football-shaped cavity was found in its reactor head. Tests show the steel liner beneath the head was starting to crack.

Recent laboratory tests at the U.S. Department of Energy[base ']s Oak Ridge National Laboratory suggest the reactor head could have been closer to blowing open than previously thought.

The sudden loss of offsite power at several nuclear plants during the August blackout could have been catastrophic for northern Ohio if the problem with Davis-Besse[base ']s reactor head hadn[base ']t been caught.

That[base ']s because the weakened head would have made the plant far more susceptible to a loss-of-coolant accident, Mr. Lochbaum said.

His theory maintains that the power loss would have resulted in a sudden upward pressure spike, which would have popped open the head and allowed radioactive steam to form in Davis-Besse[base ']s containment structure. If the sump and the reactor pumps had clogged, as expected, a meltdown would have been inevitable, he wrote.

If that had happened, the area would have two to five hours to evacuate. Which would have been difficult, given the conditions in the city due to the power outage. If that had happened, hundreds-- or thousands-- would be slowly dying now of radiation-induced illnesses. That number might have included Lisa, Gabe and myself.

Of course, the Secretary of Energy, when looking at a report that unequivocally assigns blame for the blackout, and knowing the company's history of shoddy safety (no one knew the reactor head was corroded until a routine shut-down revealed it) had a stern punishment in mind:

He said that while the Energy Department planned no action against FirstEnergy, it would forward its report to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Frankly, I'd be surprised if he crawled out the ass of the energy industry long enough to even read the report.
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