Justice for Andrew Siemaszko
In March 2002, workers discovered a large hole in the reactor vessel head at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio. Subsequent investigations determined that the hole had been caused by borated water leaking for about six years. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) estimated that had Davis-Besse operated for another 2 to 11 months, the damaged head could have catastrophically failed causing a serious loss of coolant accident.
In April 2005, the NRC issued an Order that would ban Andrew Siemaszko from working in the nuclear industry for five years. Siemaszko was an engineer at Davis-Besse. The NRC's order claimed that Siemaszko falsified paperwork during the spring 2000 refueling outage at Davis-Besse and duped FirstEnergy and the NRC into believing the reactor vessel head had been completely cleaned and inspected.As detailed in a rebuttal prepared by UCS, the NRC's claim contradicts the abundant record on this matter. That record shows the NRC to be flat-out wrong. The NRC has done a terrible injustice to Andrew Siemaszko. We hope that the NRC order will be rescinded.
