nuclear-news

A Near-Fukushima on the Atlantic?

On September 17 the Raleigh News & Observer reported, “Floods limit access to Duke’s Brunswick nuclear plant: crews us partopotties, cots.”

Did the Atlantic coast have a near-Fukushima event when during September Hurricane Florence made landfall? Utility Duke Energy’s Brunswick two nuclear reactors are located 30 miles south of Wilmington, NC, where the former Category 4 hurricane made landfall as a tropical storm in mid September.

It was reported that “workers are sleeping on cots and using portable toilets because the water is currently shut off and the toilets can’t flush”, and that there was “limited access to the plant, and some workers have been able to leave the site and check up on their homes nearby. After the storm passed some drove to a Walmart in Southport to stock up on provisions.”

Brunswick’s twin reactors started up in the 1940s, and are now approaching their designed operating life, 40 years. They are called boiling water reactors, the same model as the three Fukushima reactors that melted down in 2011, and were built by the same company, General Electric.

US nuclear plants are required to shut down if hurricane force winds, 73 miles per hour or higher, are moving in. Fortunately the winds weren’t quite that strong when Florence hit the East Coast.
Numerous nuke plants in the Carolina and Virginia were in the storm’s path. But only Brunswick reduced power. The “plant declared an ‘Unusual Event,’ the lowest level of nuclear emergency,” according to the News & Observer.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission reported, “Flooding of roads and downed trees prevented fresh crews from relieving the nearly 300 Duke Energy ‘storm riders’ who had been on site for days. And the blocked roads made it impossible to reach the 10 mile emergency evacuation zone if a higher level emergency is declared”

Food had to be brought in by helicopters…….https://obrag.org/2018/10/was-three-a-near-fukushima-event-on-the-atlantic-during-hurricane-florence/