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FirstEnergy Corp.'s attempt to recoup $200 million from an insurance policy has caused a four-month delay in the criminal prosecution of three workers formerly associated with the utility's Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ottawa County.

U.S. District Court Judge David Katz said at a hearing yesterday that he had no choice but to postpone the trial of Andrew Siemaszko to Sept. 10 and that of his two co-defendants, David Geisen and Rodney N. Cook, to Oct. 9 because of assertions made in a 661-page report by two FirstEnergy consultants, Exponent Failure Analysis Association of Menlo Park, Calif., and Altran Solutions Corp. of Boston.

Both of FirstEnergy's consultants claim to be global leaders in scientific failure analysis. In their joint report, they attributed most of the vessel head's erosion to a three-week accelerated leakage period before Davis-Besse was shut down on Feb. 16, 2002, contrary to what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had said.

FirstEnergy is using the new document to bolster its claim for $200 million of insurance coverage the utility had on Davis-Besse's reactor head.

It is doing so even though it admitted compromising safety for profits and paid a record $33.5 million in fines for its role in what has been described as one of the U.S. nuclear industry's biggest attempted cover-ups.

At yesterday's hearing, defense attorneys noted the new report contradicts the NRC's assertions of the cavity forming over five to six years as well as the worldwide understanding of how the plant's reactor head nearly burst open in 2002.

Such a rupture could have endangered millions of people in northern Ohio by allowing radioactive steam to form in the containment building. That type of accident would have been the first since the 1979 half-core meltdown of the Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor near Harrisburg, Pa.

Judge Katz told Justice Department attorneys he wants to know within two weeks if the NRC believes the new findings are "junk science." If so, he would prevent federal prosecutors from using the report in court.

The FirstEnergy consultants' report was completed Dec. 15. It was turned over to the NRC on March 20 and made available to defense attorneys on April 2. Jury selection for Mr. Siemaszko's trial was to start on April 30.

"If you are correct that the litigation before us is outpacing the science, then it is the government's obligation to make that determination," the judge responded.

The NRC has based many of its claims on 2004 research by the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, 25 miles southwest of Chicago.

"We didn't know there was going to be a challenge to the worldwide understanding of how these events occurred. But there is and now we have to deal with it," Chuck Boss, one of Mr. Siemaszko's attorneys, told the judge.

"That science was not challengeable. It was the position of the whole industry," she said. "If [FirstEnergy's consultants] are right, judge, it changes the whole science of stress corrosion cracking."

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