Published: June 17th, 2011 at 8:51 am ET
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Omaha World-Herald’s Photos, Facebook, June 16, 2011:
Lots of questions today about the safety of the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant. Check out this photo!
This photo was taken today by the World-Herald's Matt Miller. That's the power plant near the bottom.
Published: June 17th, 2011 at 8:51 am ET
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IF we learned anything from Fukushima, ANYTHING at all, then I would expect to see the immediate and complete dismantling of this specific site IF WE ARE SO LUCKY to escape this current flooding situation. Even if they have to relocate and reassemble the plant in a safer location, they CANNOT leave this plant as it is open to vulnerabilities in the future. If they just ignorantly reopen it as usual then we are a doomed species.
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The problem is that you just cant go and say, OK, lets move all this out of the storage pool to a new location. There is no way to move the stuff out of the pool and transport quickly. Takes a very very long time to cool and move into a casket to even think about moving it. The casket its self is about a million, and has various safety and cooling parts to make the casket work. Its Complex.
Now we can move it short distances with a crane, so the best thing to do is raise and secure the foundation. Then work on a bigger project for all nuke sites.
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Here is the “official”line from the utility which clarifies a couple points. At this moment they look to be handling things, although being flooded for the next 2 months or so does not inspire confidence that something might not go wrong.
http://www.oppd.com/AboutUs/22_007105
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Good photo. Odd, lots of really smooth land around the plant and approaching the town. Brown/blue golf course maybe?
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Below is a very graphic as well as scary way to see the forecasted increases in Missouri River flood levels that FORT CALHOUN and COOPER-BROWNVILLE nuclear reactor operators may have to withstand over what appears to be a 5 day hydrologic forecast.
Two days ago COOPER nuclear said it will shut down if flood levels rise 6 more feet, and here are 3 of those 6 feet arriving by next Tuesday according to the hydrologic prediction:
http://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=oax&gage=bron1&view=1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1”
Haven’t found anything on whether, if one of the 6 Missouri River dams were to break, COOPER’s elevated fuel pool would be better off than CALHOUN’s in-the-ground pool, or not.
Sioux City observed flood level is up one foot in the last 24-48 hours, showing how rapidly the sandbags around FORT CALHOUN and COOPER-BROWNVILLE nuclear reactors can be challenged:
http://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=fsd&gage=sscn1&view=1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1”
The Bullsheedium reading in the Fuku news is making me ill, so I’m focusing on the well-publicized, uncensored and low-drama/intrigue reports on local Missouri River cities flood conditions affecting CALHOUN and COOPER nuclear, from the network affiliate TV stations such as KMTV and KETV Omaha:
http://www.ketv.com/missouri-river-flooding-extended-coverage/28181060/video.html
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I do feel a little safer with David Lochbaum advising. I just hope they’re taking his advice.
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NRC: No flood danger at reactor
Time has been on Fort Calhoun’s side, said David Lochbaum, director of nuclear safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
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http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_risk/safety/nuclear-crisis-in-japan.html
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The group is a leading watchdog of the nuclear industry.
Lochbaum is among the handful of outside experts whom Congress taps for perspective on nuclear problems, including the crisis caused by the March earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
At the Fukushima Daiichi plant, operators had less than an hour to react to the quake before the tsunami hit, Lochbaum said. Fort Calhoun has had weeks to ready itself for flooding.
“That’s not enough time to relocate a nuclear plant to higher ground or jack it up on stilts,” he said, “but it is plenty of time to check to ensure that watertight doors are intact, backup power supplies are available and functional, fuel oil tanks are topped off, etc.”
That is what OPPD has been doing.
However, other problems at the plant and some of the flood precautions themselves have unnerved people:
>>A fire at the outset of flooding temporarily disrupted power to the spent fuel pool.
>>The nuclear station shifted to an alert status.
>>Flights over the plant have been restricted.
>>Fort Calhoun was and continues to be one of the NRC’s most tightly monitored plants because of problems it had before the flooding.
Dricks said the NRC has taken the unusual step of sending more inspectors and a branch chief to Fort Calhoun. A branch chief is a top regional regulator. In this case, it’s the individual responsible for overseeing Fort Calhoun inspections and compliance.
Also, OPPD is bringing in additional boats, food and water for employees, which is not a cause for alarm, Dricks said.
“It’s called prudence.”
Perhaps it’s just as well that Fort Calhoun got into trouble last year with federal regulators over flood preparedness.
During routine inspections in June 2010, the NRC concluded that deteriorating conditions during catastrophic flooding could make sandbagging near the river difficult.
Regulators required OPPD to improve flood defenses and signaled in April that those improvements were taking the plant in the right direction.
At that time, the plant was putting the finishing touches on the improvements, and utility officials were hopeful that this would be the month that the federal agency signed off on Fort Calhoun’s flood upgrades.
Instead, the nuclear plant is in an all-out battle with the river.
In May, OPPD learned from the Army Corps of Engineers of the imminent flooding.
Since then, the utility has taken a number of steps that Dricks said have given federal regulators confidence in OPPD’s ability to endure what will be a summer of flooding:
>>Installing an approximately 8-foot-tall, 16-foot-wide water-filled tubular rubber dam. The dam encircles the reactor building, like a black snake, and holds the floodwaters at bay.
>>Building an earthen berm around the switchyard, and other berms or sandbag walls around other electrical structures. Protecting the structures allows continued electrical power to the plant.
>>Trucking in two more fuel oil tanks that will supplement those on site and provide a total of four weeks’ fuel for the backup diesel generators. The plant is developing plans for additional supplies of fuel.
In addition, the plant’s backup batteries can provide power for eight hours, Dricks said. The plant’s daily source of electricity is brought in from outside via transmission lines. The plant has six power lines coming into the plant, and any one of those is sufficient to run it.
>>Ordering six additional boats.
The plant began sandbagging on the weekend of May 21, according to the utility.
On June 6, the plant issued to federal regulators a “Notification of Unusual Event” because the river was projected to reach a flood level that would prevent the plant from operating. This type of notification is the least serious of four emergency classifications.
On June 7, a fire occurred that caused an interruption of power to the spent fuel pool. As a result, the plant was unable to continue active cooling of that pool. According to OPPD, power was out 90 minutes.
Within minutes after the start of the fire, the utility issued an “Alert,” the second-lowest of the four levels of emergencies.
Both the NRC and OPPD agree that the disruption of power was not a threat to public safety. Calculations indicate that the plant’s spent fuel pool could have gone 83 hours without power before the water in it would have begun boiling, Dricks said.
Lochbaum said that once again, time was on OPPD’s side. The time cushion offered the utility the “luxury” of choosing a solution to the problems created by the fire, Lochbaum said.
Elizabeth Ishan Cory, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said the flight restrictions at Fort Calhoun are intended to keep curiosity seekers out of the immediate vicinity. Planes can still fly near the plant if they have flight plans and are in contact with air traffic controllers. Smaller aircraft are restricted in how close they can get to the plant.
Otherwise, there’s a risk of midair collisions that could jeopardize operations on the ground.
“When you keep the area above the ground safe, you’re going to keep the people on the ground safe, too,” Cory said.
John Remus of the Corps of Engineers said the river level at Fort Calhoun had yet to reflect the full release of water from Gavins Point Dam.
When that happens, and given normal rainfall, the river level at the plant will most likely rise about 6 inches higher than it has been for much of this week, he said.
Should higher-than-normal rainfall occur this summer, the river might rise 2.5 feet higher than it currently is, he said.
River levels and other flood measurements at the plant are made in terms of feet above sea level.
Earlier this week, the river stood at 1,005.6 feet elevation, Remus said, and has been mostly unchanged since then. The corps’ projections place the river crest this summer, barring extraordinary rains, between roughly 1,006 and 1,008 feet.
Burke said OPPD’s flood barriers would protect the plant to 1,010 to 1,012 feet elevation. The reactor itself is in a watertight container and the spent fuel pool is at 1,038.5 feet elevation.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1102, nancy.gaarder@owh.com
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NRC Event Report #46965: “Operations identified a potential flooding issue in the Intake Structure 1007 ft. 6 in. level. The area of concern is a the hole in the floor at the 1007 ft. 6 in. level where the relief valve from FP-1A discharge pipe goes through the raw pump bay and discharges into the intake cell. There is one penetration of concern. Flooding through this penetration could have impacted the ability of the station’s Raw Water (RW) pumps to perform their design accident mitigation functions.
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from Dr. Jeff Masters, weather underground, today’s blog: This week, the Army Corps of Engineers increased water flowing through all six dams to more than double the previous highs set during the floods of 1975 and 1997. The flow rates are now a massive 150,000 cubic feet per second, 1.5 times greater than the typical flow of Niagara Falls. These extreme flow rates will need to be maintained into at least mid-August, and are expected to severely strain levees on the Missouri River as it flows through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas. According to a press conference put on by NWS and the Army Corps last week, the Missouri River flood control system is based on an 1881 estimate of the maximum amount of water an extreme flood season could generate–40 million acre-feet of water during the spring and summer flood season. However, this year’s flood is expected to pump 42 – 43 million acre feet of water into the system, stressing it beyond its designed limits. In May alone, the Missouri River basin just upstream from Sioux City, Iowa, received 10.2 million acre feet of water, more than 25% above the previous May record of 7.2 million acre feet set in 1995. Additional levee failures along the Missouri are likely this summer, particularly if widespread heavy summer rains occur.
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