Click for photo: http://www.omaha.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=OW&Date=20110617&Category=NEWS01&ArtNo=706179913&Ref=AR&maxw=600&maxh=400
MATT MILLER/THE WORLD-HERALD


Story here: http://www.omaha.com/article/20110617/NEWS01/706179913#no-danger-seen-at-reactor

Map: http://www.omaha.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=OW&Date=20110617&Category=NEWS01&ArtNo=706179913&Ref=V1&maxw=600&maxh=400

FORT CALHOUN, Neb. — Despite the stunning sight of the Fort Calhoun nuclear reactor surrounded by water and the weeks of flooding that lie ahead, the plant is in a safe cold shutdown and can remain so indefinitely, the reactor's owners and federal regulators say.

“We think they've taken adequate steps to protect the plant and to assure continued safety,” Victor Dricks, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said Thursday.

Tim Burke, vice president at Omaha Public Power District, said the plant's flood barriers are being built to a level that will protect against rain and the release of record amounts of water from upstream dams on the Missouri River.

“We don't see any concerns around the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station,” Burke said at a briefing in Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle's office.

The nuclear plant, 20 miles north of Omaha, was shut down April 9 for refueling. It has not been restarted because of the imminent flooding.

Cooper Nuclear Station, which is about 70 miles south of Omaha near Brownville, Neb., continues to operate even as it makes similar flood protections. Cooper is owned by Nebraska Public Power District. The river would have to rise about 6 feet higher for the plant to go into a cold shutdown.

FULL story at link.

To the casual reader, it sounds like the plant is simply switched off
and folks could walk away from it if need be.

But as we now know from Fukushima, radioactive decay keeps the
plant quit hot for several years and that plant, even though in "cold
shutdown state", is still entirely dependent on a steady supply of huge
amounts of electricity as well as the constant attention of on-site
operators. Remove either of those two things, even briefly (hours),
and it's "Chernobyl on the Missouri".

But it sounds so safe, doesn't it? "Cold safe shutdown".

Tesha

stable and nothing can go wrong.

And on top of the issue you mention, there is the spent fuel that has to be perpetually cooled.

Could it be that they have lied to Americans routinely like a pack of republicons?

nt

For the love of...

https://twitter.com/oppdcares
http://www.oppd.com/AboutUs/22_007105
http://www.oppdstorminfo.blogspot.com/

LOOK! DRY LAND:



ALL DRY HERE...

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EbFpEWeEot0/Tfkia_dj4lI/AAAAAAAAAXg/89KmK9X6cxc/s1600/1005-2+Level+Pics+-+Inside+Aqua+Dam+by+Transformers.JPG

DOESN'T LOOK LIKE THE REACTOR BUILDING IS FLOODED TO ME...

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-W30dP1TvYNk/Tfki_GhvdoI/AAAAAAAAAXk/Nws8rwNlhfc/s1600/1004-3+Level+Pics+-+Bridge+over+Aqua+Dam+and+Walkway+to+SW+BBRE.jpg+%252826%2529.JPG

Those rubber cofferdams are guaranteed!

And even after months completely surrounded by
water, the soil won't allow percolation into the "*DRY*"
space, nor will any water find its way through any
crevices, sneak paths, or (literal) rat holes.

And no tornadoes will come along either. No siree,
we never have any of that unpredictable weather.

Yeah, everything's just dandy.

(I wonder if the FMEA has a section on "entire plant
surrounded by many feet of water for many months"?
I wonder what probability they assigned to that failure
mechanism?)

Tesha

And that water may be here till December. The national guard was at my plant today to get training on what to look for on the levee.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1321208

I'll side with the IAEA!

http://nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-engl...


A shocking report prepared by Russia’s Federal Atomic Energy Agency (FAAE) on information provided to them by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) states that the Obama regime has ordered a “total and complete” news blackout relating to any information regarding the near catastrophic meltdown of the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant located in Nebraska.

According to this report, the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant suffered a “catastrophic loss of cooling” to one of its idle spent fuel rod pools on 7 June after this plant was deluged with water caused by the historic flooding of the Missouri River which resulted in a fire causing the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) to issue a “no-fly ban” over the area.

Located about 20 minutes outside downtown Omaha, the largest city in Nebraska, the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant is owned by Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) who on their website denies their plant is at a “Level 4” emergency by stating: “This terminology is not accurate, and is not how emergencies at nuclear power plants are classified.”

Russian atomic scientists in this FAAE report, however, say that this OPPD statement is an “outright falsehood” as all nuclear plants in the world operate under the guidelines of the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) which clearly states the “events” occurring at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant do, indeed, put it in the “Level 4” emergency category of an “accident with local consequences” thus making this one of the worst nuclear accidents in US history.

Marta and I subscribe. And those large from the air photos can't have been released by the press. The air space is limited. KMTV had to use a boat to shoot photos from the air. So where did these photos from ReverendDeuce with the nice arrows come from?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nation_(disambiguation)

The Pakistan The Nation is not the progressive-leaning The Nation magazine in the US.

Well, that settles it, then! If you can't trust industry Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesmen, who can you trust?

OPPD is not a private enterprise. It's public. It's not like we're dealing with PG&E.

Not to mention these people all live in and have their families in the Omaha area too. Hell most of them grew up here.

I'm not worried about a damn thing. I don't know if anybody bothered to notice, but Nebraska is sure as hell not expecting a tsunami any time soon, or an 8.0 for that matter.

And tornadoes? Please. Nukes have more rebar than the pentagon.

It's just one little ol' nuke plant. And nuke plants need lots of water, and it has lots of water, so there.

If it didn't have water, then there would be a problem, right? Right?

But just for the heck of it lets say that the power was somehow shutdown. I know, hard to believe that the power company can't always guarantee that they can keep the lights on, but hey, it happens.

So, they have these storage pools that are hot as dickens and they have to keep water flowing through the pipes to keep the pools from imitating Fukushima where the power company there failed to keep the lights on and the pools went without water, then overheated, and blew sky high.

But that was a long time ago, and they all know better now. Heck, they all admit they never thought that Fukishima could do what it did but these are nuclear scientists and they went back to school and now they know better. They know this plant may blow, but if they told you that you might get scared so they are protecting you, so don't worry. They got this.

Kicked it anyway.

We need to shut all these reactors down.

Don

and electricity from other sources continues to be available



it would seem that everything is under control