Dennis Kucinich

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If you have not been following the recent problems at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in Northern Ohio you should.

FirstEnergy operates the plant and wants us to believe that cracks found in the wall of the Davis-Besse shield building “do not have any structural significance” and are merely “hairline” or “barely visible” cracks in “architectural” or “decorative” “features” or “elements” of the building. That’s what FirstEnergy told us on October 11, 2011. That’s what they told “investors” on October 31, 2011. And that’s what they told their shareholders in its Annual Report on February 28, 2012.

But the truth is that the Davis-Besse shield building no longer provides the margin of safety that was required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to obtain its license to operate.

FirstEnergy admitted this in a report it submitted to the NRC on February 27. FirstEnergy admitted that the cracks in the shield building wall made the shield building “non-conforming to the current design and licensing bases….” In layman’s terms, that means that, given the current condition of the shield building wall, FirstEnergy would not be issued a license to operate Davis-Besse if it applied for one today.

When Davis-Besse was originally designed, engineers calculated the maximum forces that the shield building would have to withstand. The NRC then required a greater strength to provide a margin of safety. The shield building was constructed with even greater strength than that, providing an additional margin of safety. FirstEnergy’s Report to the NRC means that the additional margin of safety no longer exists. Translation: The overall margin of safety has been reduced below what the Davis-Besse operating license required.

Davis-Besse’s current license to operate runs through 2017. FirstEnergy wants to extend that license for 20 more years after that, despite the reduced margin of safety of the shield building wall. FirstEnergy must not be granted an extension unless the full margin of safety is restored. We simply cannot take any chances with a nuclear power plant that threatens the safety of the Great Lakes region.

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In 1995 At Maui High Performance Computing Center The Maui Scientific Analysis & Visualization of the Environment Program was first incubated. I was the principal investigator of this independant research project which was a joint development between MHPCC, Silicon Graphics Computers (SGI) & NKO.ORG. Using SGI Cosmo Worlds software, we pioneered the development of Internet based 3D virtual reality GIS based interactive worlds. In 1996 with a network of seven high performance SGI workstations we pioneered development of live streaming MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, Real Video and QuickTime Streaming Server utilizing Kassenna MediaBase software. In Maui 2002 we pioneered and tested the first wireless live streaming video using laptop computers and Maui Sky Fiber's portable 3G wireless device. In Maui we pioneered live streaming video using usb modems from AT&T , Verizon as well as live streaming from iPhone 3 over 3G wireless networks. Today The Maui S.A.V.E. Program has diversified into storm tracking including visualization and analysis of large, memory-intensive gridded data sets such as the National Hurricane Center's wind speed probabilities. I volunteer my services to numerous Disaster Services Organizations. In June 2013 I returned from Hurricane Sandy deployment as a computer operations service associate with the Disaster Services Technology Group assisting as The American Red Cross migrated from a Disaster Response Operation to Long Term Recovery Operations. Pioneering the production/editing and Internet distribution of HD video to sites like Youtube.com and Vimeo.com we are shining the light towards environmental and peace efforts of humans across the globe. Since 1992 I have held the vision of establishing Maui, Hawaii as the environmental sciences center of the world. After His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet came to Maui This vision has expanded to establishing Maui as the environmental & peace center of the world.

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