First Energy - Notable Accidents and Incidents

Notable Accidents and Incidents

• Anthony J. Alexander has been president and chief executive officer of FirstEnergy since 2004. In May 2007, Forbes listed Alexander as receiving $8.5 million in total compensation for the latest fiscal year, with a four-year total compensation of $23.08 million.

• The Three Mile Island accident is an accident that occurred in 1979 in a nuclear plant run by Metropolitan Edison. The plant was sold by GPU to AmerGen Energy Corporation in 1998. In 2011, it was owned by Exelon.

• The 2003 North American blackout was attributed partly to FirstEnergy's failure to trim the trees around its high voltage lines in a certain sector of Ohio; heat and extreme power needs caused the lines to sag, coming into contact with the trees and causing flashover.

• The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission voted on January 16, 2004 to investigate Metropolitan Edison, Pennsylvania Electric and Pennsylvania Power (the former GPU companies) because their service reliability "may have fallen below established standards".

• On Friday, January 20, 2006, FirstEnergy acknowledged a cover-up of serious safety violations by former workers at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station, and accepted a plea bargain with the U.S. Department of Justice in lieu of possible federal criminal prosecution. The plea bargain relates to the March 2002 discovery of severe corrosion in the pressure vessel of the nuclear reactor, contained within the plant's containment building. In the agreement, the company agreed to pay fines of $23 million, with an additional $5 million to be contributed toward research on alternative energy sources and to Habitat for Humanity as well as to pay for costs related to the Federal investigation. In addition, two former employees and one former contractor were indicted for purposely deceiving Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) inspectors in multiple documents (including one videotape) over several years, hiding evidence that the reactor pressure vessel was being seriously corroded by boric acid. The maximum penalty for the three is 25 years in prison. The indictment also cites other employees as providing false information to inspectors, but does not name them.

• In 2005, the NRC identified two earlier incidents at Davis-Besse as being among the top five events (excluding the actual disaster at Three Mile Island) most likely to have resulted in a nuclear disaster in the event of a subsequent failure.