Officials monitoring rising floodwaters at Nebraska nuclear plantsBy the CNN Wir

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http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/06/23/nebraska.flooding/

Officials monitoring rising floodwaters at Nebraska nuclear plantsBy the CNN

Wire Staff

June 23, 2011 -- Updated 1806 GMT (0206 HKT)

(CNN) -- U.S. nuclear regulators say two Nebraska nuclear power plants have

protected critical equipment from the rising waters of the Missouri River even

though flooding has reached the grounds of one of them.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is confident those safeguards will prevent a

disaster at either plant even though the Missouri is expected to remain flooded

for several weeks, NRC spokesman Victor Dricks said Thursday.

The Fort Calhoun plant, about 20 miles north of Omaha, was shut down for

refueling in April. Parts of the grounds are already under two feet of water as

the swollen Missouri overflows its banks. But the Omaha Public Power District,

which owns the plant, has built flood walls around the reactor, transformers and

the plant's electrical switchyard, the NRC said.

" They've surrounded all the vital equipment with berms, " Dricks said.

An 8-foot-tall, water-filled berm, 16 feet wide at its base, surrounds the

reactor containment structure and auxiliary buildings, the NRC says. The plant

has brought in an additional emergency diesel generator, water pumps, sandbags

and firefighting equipment as well, according to regulators.

Dricks said the NRC has sent additional inspectors to Fort Calhoun, which

declared an " unusual event " -- the lowest level of alert -- on June 6 due to

rising water. Six inspectors are now monitoring conditions there around the

clock, Dricks said.

The Nuclear Station, about 80 miles south of Omaha, remains operating at

full power. The plant issued an unusual event declaration on Sunday as water

levels rose, but the current level is two feet below the plant's elevation,

Dricks said.

The NRC will dispatch additional inspectors to the plant " if conditions

warrant, " Dricks said.

Heavy rainfall in Montana and North Dakota, combined with melting snow from the

Rocky Mountains, have sent the Missouri urging downstream this summer. The river

washed over and punched through levees in nearby northwestern Missouri over the

weekend, spurring authorities to urge about 250 nearby residents to leave their

homes.

The 6 to 12 inches of rainfall in the upper Missouri basin in the past few weeks

is nearly a normal year's worth, and runoff from the mountain snowpack is 140%

of normal, according to weather forecasters.

And CNN affiliate KETV reported Wednesday that, as a precautionary move, the

facility is keeping dozens of staff members onsite around the clock. The

station reported that about 60 people are sleeping on cots at the plant and that

the staffers are being rotated out every two days.

It was catastrophic flooding from Japan's March 11 tsunami that knocked out

cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, resulting in three

reactors melting down and producing the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

This year's Midwestern flooding has also led to a spate of rumors about the Fort

Calhoun plant that Omaha Public Power and the NRC have been trying to knock

down.

The utility has set up a " flood rumor control " page to reassure the public that

there has been no release of radioactivity from the plant. An electrical fire

June 7 did knock out cooling to its spent fuel storage pool for about 90

minutes, but the coolant water did not reach a boiling point before backup pumps

went into service, it said.

" People are getting scared by a lot of the misinformation, " Dricks said. " It's

primarily coming from Internet bloggers rather than the mainstream media. None

of them have bothered to check with us. "