Protesters stage skit before Davis-Besse hearing

Michael Keegan of Monroe, a member of Don't Waste Michigan, portrays a cracked Humpty Dumpty as he and other protesters perform a skit near Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant.

The Blade/Andy Morrison
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Joseph Demare of Bowling Green shouts 'no more nukes,' as protesters perform near Davis-Besse.

OAK HARBOR, Ohio — Ninety minutes before a meeting was to start to discuss cracks found at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant, anti-nuclear protesters Thursday staged a brief skit that reiterated their misgivings about the plant’s resumed operation.

Kevin Kamps, a leader of Takoma Park, Md.-based Beyond Nuclear, said the skit featuring the Homer Simpson and Mr. Burns cartoon characters, King Kong, and the Besse plant as a cracking egg was “absurd, zany street theater to blow off a little steam before we head off to a very serious meeting.”

They also mocked Thursday night’s 6:30 p.m. meeting — at which some 250 people have arrived for — as a dog-and-pony show.

Characters in the skit, which was conducted with the power plant as a backdrop, pretended to repair the building’s cracks with “nuclear-grade duct tape” and “nuclear-grade Gorilla Glue” while three-eyed fish danced nearby.

“The tritium leaks into the lake are beneficial to certain species,” Mr. Kamps, as Mr. Burns, intoned.

Michael Keegan of Monroe, a member of Don't Waste Michigan, portrays a cracked Humpty Dumpty as he and other protesters perform a skit near Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant.

“They don’t even know the root cause. How can they say that it’s safe at this point?” said Mr. Kamps, who played the malevolent owner of a nuclear power plant on The Simpsons cartoons series.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission scheduled the Thursday night meeting to discuss inspections of the cracks found in a concrete structure at Davis-Besse and its reasons for letting the plant restart in early December.

The meeting is to run through 9:30 p.m. Thursday at the Camp Perry Clubhouse, 1000 Lawrence Rd., Bldg. 600, Port Clinton. The NRC had postponed a Dec. 15 meeting, citing a scheduling conflict.

A contractor cutting an access opening to install a replacement reactor head found a 30-foot hairline crack Oct. 10. It was in the 2 1/2-foot-thick reinforced-concrete building that surrounds a 1½-inch-thick steel containment vessel that encloses the reactor.

After a nine-week shutdown, FirstEnergy Corp. was allowed to restart the plant, citing its study that determined the cracks didn’t pose a threat. NRC officials said they also did checks and will present their findings. The plant near Oak Harbor is along Lake Erie, 30 miles east of Toledo.