The Nuke News cup runneth over (So does the Missouri River)

by David Safier

Where to start in today's Nuke News? How about in the good old U.S. of A.

I remember writing in a recent post, Nebraska's nuclear reactors are protected from Missouri River flooding by earthen berms and rubber walls. What could go wrong?

Here's what. The rubber wall can deflate, as it did at the Fort Calhoun Reactor.

Before dawn, a piece of heavy equipment nicked an eight-foot-high, 2,000-foot-long temporary rubber berm, and it deflated. Water also began to approach electrical equipment, which prompted operators to cut themselves off from the grid and start up diesel generators. (It returned to grid power later Sunday.)

But everything is still OK, because "the facility is designed to remain secure at a river level of up to 1,014 feet above sea level" and the water is only at 1,006.5 feet. The mighty Missouri crested 7.5 feet below danger level. (No, as satirical as this sounds, I am not making this up). It's better to be lucky than prepared, right?

At Cooper Station, another Nebraska reactor, the assistant operations manager was asked by the N.R.C. chairman, what would happen if water gets in the reactor? Here's the answer. Again, I am not making this up.

“We’ve got a sump pump over here,” said Dan Goodman, the assistant operations manager, leading him around to the other side of the giant diesel generator, which is the size of a tractor-trailer.

Why don't I feel safer knowing the reactor is one sump pump away from serious problems?

In other news, the Star has the third article in AP's excellent Aging Nukes series. It speaks of our woefully inadequate evacuation plans for the area around nuclear plants, made far worse by the increases in population in those areas since the plants were built. If a 50-mile radius evacuation were called for around the Indian Point reactor, for instance, which is 25 miles outside of New York City, 6% of the country's population would have to take to the highways and byways — 17.3 million people. Better hope you have a helicopter parked on the roof of your condo, because you ain't gettin' anywhere by car.

Meanwhile, at Fukushima, people who live nearby have detectable levels of radiation in their urine. And the new system to remove contaminants from the radioactive water is referred to as a glitch-prone system. It gets clogged up, and water is leaking from hoses. How big a problem is the contaminated water? They're storing enough of the stuff "to fill 40 Olympic-size swimming pools." They're running out of space.

I'm hoping the U.S. doesn't have to learn the extreme dangers of nuclear power the hard way, like Japan has recently and the Soviet Union did earlier. We dodged a bullet at Three Mile Island and ignored what we should have learned. It's an antiquated, dangerous 20th century technology which is aging and deteriorating day by day and year by year. It's time to decommission these things on a timetable similar to what's already planned in Germany and Switzerland and is being considered in Japan as well.