Worries Over Two Nuclear Plants

As record floodwaters along the Missouri River drench homes and businesses, concerns have grown about keeping a couple of notable structures dry: two riverside nuclear power plants in Nebraska.
Though the plants have declared “unusual events,” the lowest level in the emergency taxonomy used by federal nuclear regulators, both were designed to withstand this level of flooding, and neither is viewed as being at risk for a disaster, said a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
One plant, the Fort Calhoun Station, about 19 miles north of Omaha, was shut down in April for refueling, and the operators elected to keep it in “cold shutdown” in anticipation of the flooding. The other plant, Cooper Nuclear Station, located downriver and situated on higher ground, is still operating.
Reactors in Florida and Louisiana, for example, have shut down in anticipation of approaching hurricanes.
The current flooding, which was caused by heavy rain and snow in parts of the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains, forcing record water releases from the dams normally used to prevent flooding, has pushed communities from Montana to Missouri to create barriers to hold back the river, which is expected to stay at these high levels for much of the summer.

Much of the attention has been focused on the Fort Calhoun plant because of recent concerns about its preparedness and the dramatic images of the structures surrounded in all direction by water, as if rising out of a lake. Earlier this month, the plant briefly lost power needed to cool the spent fuel pool after a fire that remains under investigation.
Last year, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission cited the Fort Calhoun plant for not being adequately prepared for floods and rated the safety violation in the “yellow” category, the second most serious. The agency ordered changes because it said that under the plan in place at the time, a major flood could cause core damage.
– from nytimes.com
Why still playing with fire? Close all nuclear plants.