Nuclear facility workers indicted

CLEVELAND, OHIO - Two former FirstEnergy employees and a contractor allegedly used "tricks, schemes and devices" to cover up details about damage at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant, according to a five-count federal indictment.

Using false statements, video and letters in late 2001, the indictment said, the three misled the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during what is now called the fourth-worst nuclear power incident in U.S. history.

A grand jury in Cleveland recently indicted David Geisen and Andrew Siemaszko, former FirstEnergy employees, and Rodney Cook, a contractor the utility hired.

The men are accused of concealing acid leaks that nearly ate through the 6-inch steel top of Davis-Besse's reactor head.

The NRC estimated the reactor lining would have failed in two to 22 months if the hole had not been discovered in March 2002.

Davis-Besse is on the Lake Erie shore in Oak Harbor.

FirstEnergy Corp. spokesman Todd Schneider said the Akron utility had little comment regarding the indictments.

Geisen and Siemaszko left the company in the fall of 2003. Cook, the consultant, was never a FirstEnergy employee, he said.

None of the three could be located for comment.

In August 2001, the NRC warned FirstEnergy that plants similar to Davis-Besse were experiencing problems with acid leaks and asked the Akron utility to report on the condition of its nuclear power plant by the end of the year.

In oral and written reports, the men falsely assured the NRC that Davis-Besse had been thoroughly inspected and had no problems, according to the indictment.

At the same time, they asked to delay further inspection until a scheduled refueling in 2002.

The three men failed to report problems gaining access to parts of the reactor head where the damage was later found, the indictment said. They allegedly omitted a portion of a video of the reactor that showed large boric acid deposits.

They also are accused of lying when reporting that in 1996 "the entire reactor pressure vessel head was inspected."

The indictment said, "In fact, at least twenty-four nozzles were blocked from view because of boric acid."

The NRC said it would not have allowed the plant to continue to restart after a 2000 inspection if it had known the full measure of the damage at the plant and that the inspections were incomplete.

"Had the NRC known that the plant was being operated with leakage through the reactor vessel head, the agency would have taken immediate action to shut down the plant," James Caldwell, NRC regional administrator, said in a release earlier this month.

Siemaszko has said he was wrongly fired and that he had told supervisors the reactor needed to be cleaned. He said managers rejected his requests.

Both Siemaszko and Geisen were barred by the NRC from working in the nuclear industry for five years.

The plant was safely shut down in 2002.

In September 2002, company officials told the NRC that it is making safety, not profit, the plant's top priority.

FirstEnergy's self-analysis of what went wrong at Davis-Besse reported that previous plant management had emphasized production over safety.

FirstEnergy paid a $5.45 million fine in April for its part in the incident. The corporation was not named in the indictment.

The nuclear plant was restarted in March 2004 after a two-year shutdown.

FirstEnergy spent more than $600 million in repairs and to buy replacement electricity while the plant was shut down.

The indictments represent the last of the investigations into the incident. The case was assigned to U.S. District Court Judge David A. Katz in Toledo.