application was August 10, 2010. On December 8, 2015, the NRC granted a 20-year license extension to expire on April 22, 2037. On March 31, 2018, FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company filed for Bankruptcy protection. Around that time, the company indicated it would close the nuclear plant. In 2019, Ohio lawmakers debated a $9/MWh subsidy to keep Davis–Besse open. House Bill 6 was signed into law on July 23, 2019, and FirstEnergy announced it would refuel Davis–Besse and rescind its deactivation notice on July 24, 2019. It was later learned that the bill itself was a part of a public corruption scheme revealed by the Justice Department in July 2020. (→ Ohio nuclear bribery scandal) Seismic risk The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's estimate of the risk each year of an earthquake intense enough to cause core damage to the reactor at Davis–Besse was 1 in 149,254, according to an NRC study published in August 2010. Surrounding population The Nuclear Regulatory Commission defines two emergency planning zones around nuclear power plants: a plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of , concerned primarily with exposure to, and inhalation of, airborne radioactive contamination, and an ingestion pathway zone of about , concerned primarily with ingestion of food and liquid contaminated by radioactivity. The 2010 U.S. population within of Davis–Besse was 18,635, an increase of 14.2 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within was 1,791,856, an increase of 1.4 percent since 2000. Cities within include Sandusky, Ohio, ; Toledo, Ohio ; and Detroit, Michigan, (distance to the city centers). U.S. Census data for Canadian population within the area is not available, though Leamington, Ontario (population: 30,000) is away, and Windsor, Ontario (population: 241,000) is from Davis–Besse. The cooling tower for Davis–Besse stands at 493 feet above the surrounding area, making it a major landmark around the western end of Lake Erie. The tower is visible from the Michigan and Ontario shores and on clear days the condensing steam plume can be seen from Bowling Green, Ohio, over 40 miles away. See also Nuclear reactor accidents in the United States Pilot-operated relief valve References External links Davis–Besse Pressurized Water Reactor Information from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Union of Concerned Scientists report on Davis–Besse U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's "Davis–Besse Lessons Learned Task Force" (with links to the Task Force Report) Energy infrastructure completed in