Some states just don't get it. Ohio is one. Perhaps Ohioans think that because their state college won the football championship game, they can defy reality. NOT! Their state public utilities commission may decide soon to subsidize two legacy coal plants and perhaps America's most decrepit nuclear power plant, Davis-Besse [photo]. It has suffered five of the worst breakdowns in the nuclear industry, and its owners are seeking a public bailout of $10 billion while outmoded nuclear plants nationwide are shuting down. Renewable energy and natural gas has priced nuclear power out of energy market.Davis-Besse is a Merican horror story of what can go wrong with a nuclear facility. First off, the design is a sixties clone of Three-Mile Island, the only US plant to suffer a meltdown. In 2002 boric acid was found leaking onto the pressure reactor vessel, nearly eating its way through six inches of stainless steel. {28.08.08, Engineer Lied About Nuke} A Chernobyl-type explosion was missed by a fraction of an inch. Even the captured regulator, NRC, imposed the largest fine ever on an owner for that near disaster. Another nuke's pressure vessel head from Midland, MI was welded in and replaced yet again. The $600 million spent to upgrade the facility did not alter its trajectory of failure. Fires and chronic malfunctions still plague it.
The owners continue to operate Davis-Besse instead of investing in clean energy because they can. Ohio became the first state to roll back its green power program in 2010 after Koch-backed Repugnants took office. Gov. Kasich (R) is recognized as someone who "helped mold ALEC in its formative years" ALEC is the discredited organization specializing in canned legislation that is routinely anti-progressive. No wonder fracking is having a field day in Ohio; Ohio is shaking but not to the tunes from the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame in Cincinnati.