U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today took to the House floor to protest FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company's claim that the Blizzard of 1978 caused the widespread, severe cracking in the Davis-Besse atomic reactor's concrete shield building. Kucinich asked "Can they be believed when they claim a snow storm 34 years ago created cracks that appear today? Are buildings all over northern Ohio falling apart today because of the blizzard of '78? Or is this just another in a series of desperate lies used keep a plant going that should either be shut down or massively repaired? How long before FirstEnergy's 34 year snow job is fully exposed?" Kucinich put out a media release, with links to the video of his House floor statement.
The Toledo Blade reports that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has accepted FENOC's "Snow Job" as the root cause explanation for the cracking at Davis-Besse, despite its own staff's tough questioning of FENOC's original root cause analysis report on Feb. 28th.
The Toledo Blade has published an editorial breaking the story on what may yet prove to amount to a 36-year-old cover up at the Davis-Besse atomic reactor. On May 16th, FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company (FENOC) admitted for the first time that cracking on the dome of the Davis-Besse concrete shield building, a part of the containment structure, was first documented not in October 2011, but rather 36 years earlier, in 1976.