WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. nuclear regulator said on Tuesday it has launched an inspection to examine ground settling at various places around Energy Harbor Corp’s Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in Ohio.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in release it determined a “special inspection” was necessary after learning that a failure in October 2022 of a pipeline meant to supply water for firefighting was likely caused by stress from ground settling at the plant in Oak Harbor in northern Ohio, near Lake Erie.
Last month, the NRC also learned of additional fire protection pipeline failures and “multiple occurrences of ground settling at the site.”
Energy Harbor, the operator of the single reactor, 894-megawatt plant, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Construction on the plant began in 1970.
The NRC said a five-person special inspection team will establish a timeline related to ground-settling zones and assess the actions to evaluate, monitor or mitigate the phenomenon and its potential impact on equipment key to plant safety.
NRC inspectors said the plant was safe and that Energy Harbor had promptly restored the fire protection after the piping failures.
The NRC fined Davis-Besse more than $5 million, the largest in the regulator’s history, for violations after workers in 2002 discovered a football-sized “void” caused by corrosion in the reactor vessel head.
The agency will document their findings of the ground settling inspection on the NRC website, upon completion of the inspection.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
