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However, water can quickly turn dangerous when floods occur. Flooding can damage equipment or knock out the plant’s electrical systems, disabling its cooling mechanisms. This is what happened at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in Japan as a result of the March 2011 tsunami, causing severe damage to several of the plant’s reactors.

Floods due to natural causes

While tsunamis are not a significant risk for most U.S. nuclear power plants, there are other natural weather events that can lead to flooding. Heavy rain or snow can cause rivers to overflow, and tropical storms or nor’easters can cause storm surges that threaten coastal plants.

Floods from such natural weather events have caused problems at several U.S. nuclear power plants in recent years. In June 2011, unusually high water on the Missouri River, caused by a combination of heavy spring rains and Rocky Mountain snowmelt, inundated the Fort Calhoun plant in Nebraska. And in October 2012, flooding from Hurricane Sandy caused two New Jersey nuclear plants, Salem andOyster Creek, to shut down when high water levels threatened their water intake and circulation systems………

The NRC’s responsibility

Almost as worrisome as the threat of dam failure itself is the fact that the NRC apparently was aware of the increased risk for years before addressing it—and passages indicating this were blacked out in the 2011 report on its original release, according to an NRC engineer, Richard Perkins, who contacted the agency’s Inspector Generalin September 2012. The NRC had claimed that the redactions were necessary for security reasons, but Perkins asserted that the agency’s real motive was to avoid embarrassment.

The NRC should fulfill its responsibility to the public and act to ensure that the threat of flood risk is adequately addressed at our nation’s nuclear plants.http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/nuclear-power-accidents/flood-risk-at-nuclear-power-plants#.VhhFHOyqpHw