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at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Station near Blair, Nebraska, the river is already lapping at the Aqua Dams -- giant plastic tubes filled with water -- that form a stockade around the plant's buildings. The plant has become an island.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a "yellow finding PDF" (indicating a safety significance somewhere between moderate and high) for the plant last October, after determining that the Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) "did not adequately prescribe steps to mitigate external flood conditions in the auxiliary building and intake structure" in the event of a worst-case Missouri River flood. The auxiliary building -- which surrounds the reactor building like a horseshoe flung around a stake -- is where the plant's spent-fuel pool and emergency generators are located.

OPPD has since taken corrective measures, including sealing potential floodwater-penetration points, installing emergency flood panels, and revising sandbagging procedures. It's extremely unlikely that this year's flood, no matter how historic, will turn into a worst-case scenario: That would happen only if an upstream dam were to instantaneously disintegrate. Nevertheless, in March of this year the NRC identified Fort Calhoun as one of three nuclear plants requiring the agency's highest level of oversight. In the meantime, the water continues to rise

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A federal agency has ordered additional oversight for the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant because of regulatory violations found last year at the site north of Omaha.Fort Calhoun will be subject to additional inspections and public meetings, and the Omaha Public Power District must submit a detailed improvement plan, according to a letter released Tuesday from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The NRC and OPPD both said none of the problems identified at Fort Calhoun represented a public safety threat. Regulators say a key electrical part failed during a test and deficiencies in flood planning were found last year.OPPD officials promised improvement at Fort Calhoun, which sits about 20 miles north of Omaha on the west bank of the Missouri River."We take this situation very seriously," OPPD CEO Gary Gates said. "We will work to find ways to improve and we will seek assistance from other high performing power plants as well."

Besides the regulatory violations already on the books at the NRC, a small fire at Fort Calhoun briefly knocked out the cooling system for used fuel in June. Temperaturs at the plant never exceeded safe levels and power was quickly restored.That fire is still being investigated and the NRC has not determined the severity of the problem under its regulations.

A top regulator said on Sunday that a nuclear power plant threatened by flooding from the swollen Missouri River was operating safely and according to standards. "I got to see a lot of efforts they're taking to deal with flooding and the challenges that presents," Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said after touring the Cooper Nuclear Station near the village of Brownville and meeting with plant officials and executives.

Right now, we think they're taking an appropriate approach. This is a plant that is operating safely and meeting our standards," he added.The plant is located about 80 miles south of Omaha, where snow melt and heavy rains have forced the waters of the Missouri River over its banks, although they have not flooded the plant and receded slightly on Sunday.Jaczko said he was not doing an official plant inspection. He was briefed by NRC resident inspectors -- the agency staff who work on-site every day -- plant officials and executives, said Mark Becker, a spokesman at the Nebraska Public Power District, the agency that runs the plant.The power plant sat about 4 feet above the river's level on Sunday. The river had surged over its banks near the plant and filled in low-lying land near the Cooper plant.Water levels there are down after upstream levees failed, Becker said, relieving worries that water will rise around the Brownville plant as it has at another nuclear plant north of Omaha in Fort Calhoun.Art Zaremba, director of nuclear safety at Cooper, backed the assessment."The plant is very safe right now, and we've taken a lot of steps to make sure it stays that way," Zaremba said.

Whistleblower pays price for voicing nuke safety concerns, MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, Dec. 15, 2011: Dr. Walter Tamosaitis, Research & Technology Manager for the Waste Treatment Plant processing Hanford’s radioactive waste Walt Tamosaitis, nuclear waste whistleblower and Tom Carpenter, attorney and executive director of the non-profit group Hanford Challenge, talks with Rachel Maddow about safety concerns at the site and the penalties he has suffered as a consequence of speaking about his concerns.

Transcript Excerpts At ~7:00 in MADDOW: Dr. Tamosaitis, can you describe your safety concerns at Hanford [nuclear waste facility in Washington] for the non-nuclear engineers among us? TAMOSAITIS: Yes, ma`am. The major concern is poor mixing in the vessels, the tanks that process the hazardous nuclear waste. And if you have poor mixing in the tank, you can build up solids, the solids can trap hydrogen gas. You can have solids build up on the bottom of the tank which can lead to a criticality. So, trapping a hydrogen gas can lead to a fire or an explosion. And the solids buildup could lead to a criticality.

At ~9:45 in MADDOW: In terms of — Dr. Tamosaitis, let me go back to you. In terms of your safety concerns and, again, speaking to a public that may not be, including myself, all that familiar with the processes you`re describing there, what is the greatest risk that you think is possible here based on corners that you`ve seen cut? Are we looking at something that could be more than the kind of leaks that Hanford has already experienced? Are we talking about something that could be a larger release of radioactive material? TAMOSAITIS: Yes, ma`am. Yes, Rachel, we are. If we have poor mixing, we could trap hydrogen gas, we could end up with a fire or explosion, as we saw on the TV at Fukushima in Japan.

Event Notification Report for July 25, 2011, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Operations Center:

Event Number: 47088Facility: FORT CALHOUNEvent Date: 07/22/2011Event Time: 08:30 [CDT]Emergency Class: NON EMERGENCY10 CFR Section: 50.72(b)(3)(ii)(B) – UNANALYZED CONDITION Event Text FIRE SUPRESSION PUMPS INOPERABLE “Both Fire Suppression Pumps are not operable because the required monthly surveillance tests will not be completed for June and July. The surveillance tests will be completed when flood waters recede to below 1004 feet MSL. The current river level is 1006.3 feet. Both fire pumps, FP-1A and FP-1B, are available and lined up for use. Other options are also available to provide a means of backup fire water supply that include: - Water Plant Pumps DW-8A and DW-8B aligned to the Fire Protection (FP) system.- Temporary connection to the fire protection water distribution system by the Fort Calhoun Fire Truck that is staged on site or any other fire pumper truck via fire hydrant FP-3G.- Admin Building/Training Center fire hydrant via fire hoses or water truck. This supply is from Blair water system and FP storage tank west of Highway 75.- Drafting from the Missouri River via temporary pumps.” The licensee notified the NRC Resident Inspector.

"The radiation from this unreported but very dangerous event was released without protecting the residents of Fukushima Prefecture -- especially the children. But the radiation was detected at elevated levels from 2:30 AM until 7:30 AM on a monitor in Ibaraki Prefecture. How many Curies were released? When will this nuclear war against the Japanese people and the Northern Hemisphere ever end? Instead of evacuation, the government gives the children (sick with radiation symptoms) film badges to measure the external exposure dose ... another study group like US govt. studies on Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims (they are still being studied), Iraq victims, Gaza victims. And the US government did the same thing to Americans during 1,300 nuclear bomb tests in the US."

And if that's not enough bad news, we have another big problem. Here at home we have two Nebraska nuclear power stations located near the Missouri River, and one is already submerged in flood waters. A hole torn in a 2,000-foot, inflatable barrier placed around the facility allowed over several feet of water to pour into containment buildings and electrical transformers at the plant. This disaster was reported -- and then quickly silenced -- by mainstream media. Cooper Nuclear Station, one of the nuclear power plants in the area, declared a "Notification of Unusual Event" after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released massive amounts water from two dams. This event is ongoing. ...

I wish I knew how all of this will play out. All I know is sometimes we all feel like we're just communities of puny little ants who can never change a thing. But don't despair, for we are many ... and when we combine our numbers, we are a very powerful force! I truly believe that we are the ones we have always waited for. As a lover of American Indian culture, I recall an old Indian wise man once said...

Federal regulators have downgraded the flood-idled nuclear power plant 20 miles north of Omaha, ranking it as one of the two poorest performing reactors in the United States.The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in a letter to the Omaha Public Power District released Tuesday, faulted Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station for the performance of its safety systems — those needed to prevent potential problems from becoming potentially catastrophic.The U.S. has 104 licensed nuclear reactors, and Fort Calhoun is now in a category with one other plant that in laymen's terms could be considered a letter grade of “D.” No plants have an “F,” which requires a plant be shut down.

Fort Calhoun already was under heightened supervision as the Fukushima disaster unfolded in Japan because it was one of three reactors at the time being closely monitored by American regulators. This move is a step below where the OPPD plant was then.Officials with the utility say they realize they have issues to address.Gary Gates, president and chief executive officer, and David Bannister, chief nuclear officer, said they are committed to getting Fort Calhoun back to a higher grade and are confident in the utility's ability to do so.

Lara Uselding, spokeswoman for the NRC, said the downgrade is the result of two specific problems in safety systems at the plant.One had to do with a bad contact in an electrical system the NRC said OPPD failed to act aggressively enough to address. The other had to do with flood preparations before the current flooding. That discovery by federal regulators resulted in major improvements to the plant's flood protections before the Missouri River rose.

this is a June 29 Des Moines Register editorial, telling readers "Don't be irrational, don't be hysterical, and don't you dare be anti-nuke". And don't listen to those "baseless rumors": Nuclear plants need scrutiny, not hysteria "Right now the plants are safe."That's what the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said of the two nuclear power plants along the Missouri River in Nebraska after recent flooding. There have been no "nuclear releases." Vital systems to ensure safety are protected. Flood waters are not expected to become unmanageable

Gov. Terry Branstad said that state officials are monitoring the plants and that the public should not worry.Yet some people worry

A healthy dose of concern about nuclear energy is necessary to help keep this country's power plants are safe. The United States must remain dedicated to rigorous scrutiny of plant safety regulations and emergency measures

In We Almost Lost Detroit, Hocevar described the blind faith of scientists in atomic energy and their wrong assumptions

he wrote in his foreword to the book We Almost Lost Detroit.

Nuclear power requires “perfection” and “no acts of God,” we were warned years ago. This has been brought home by the ongoing disaster caused by the earthquake and tsunami that struck the Fukushimi Daiichi nuclear plant complex, the flooding along the Missouri River in Nebraska now threatening two nuclear plants, and the wildfire laying siege to Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of atomic energy

In response to the freakishness of historic floods on the Missouri River in Nebraska threatening the Fort Calhoun and Cooper atomic reactors simultaneous to a historic wildfire in New Mexcio coming dangerously close to tens of thousands of 55 gallon barrels of plutonium-contaminated wastes, Beyond Nuclear has published a new fact sheet entitled "Far from 'solving global warming,' atomic energy is too risky to operate in a destabilized climate."

The POTRBLOG team has been able to identify a 19.25 hour half life and a follow on  4.8 day half life component in the radioactive fallout which rained down on Saint Louis, Missouri on Monday 17th of October 2011. The half lives and decay chain indicate the presence of radioactive Iodine 133 and its daughter product Xenon 133. Additional longer half life components are also present. Further updates, and data will follow 1st Update

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 [photo top left] 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.

Though this report confirms independent readings in the United States of “negligible release of nuclear gasses” related to this accident it warns that by the Obama regimes censoring of this event for “political purposes” it risks a “serious blowback” from the American public should they gain knowledge of this being hidden from them. Interesting to note about this event was the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chief, Gregory B. Jaczko, blasting the Obama regime just days before the near meltdown of the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant by declaring that “the policy of not enforcing most fire code violations at dozens of nuclear plants is “unacceptable” and has tied the hands of NRC inspectors.”

This report further notes that the “cover-up” of this nuclear disaster by President Obama is being based on his “fantasy” of creating so-called green jobs which he (strangely) includes nuclear power into as his efforts to bankrupt the US coal industry proceed at a record breaking pace.