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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

Nuclear power plants in Pennsylvania are preparing to cope with flooding, but none has declared a state of emergency, US Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan said Thursday. All the Pennsylvania nuclear plants that could potentially be affected by flooding are in close communication with NRC, and with state and local officials, and the agency has resident inspectors at each plant who are monitoring the situation, Sheehan said. The plants were all operating at full power early Thursday, according to NRC data, except for Exelon Nuclear's Peach Bottom-3, which was at 88% power and has been gradually reducing its output for several days ahead of refueling outage.

Emergency diesel generators and their fuel tanks at those plants are "located at a higher elevation, in buildings designed to keep them dry," Sheehan said. Exelon Nuclear's Three Mile Island-1, located along the Susquehanna River, 10 miles southeast of Harrisburg, began its abnormal operating procedure for river flooding early Wednesday, Sheehan said. The river peaked at 291 feet above sea level Wednesday and was at 288 feet above sea level early Thursday. It is expected to crest Thursday at about 297 feet above sea level, he said.

If the river reaches 300 feet above sea level, then the plant would have to declare an unusual event, the least significant of NRC's four emergency levels, Sheehan said. If the river reaches 302 feet above sea level, the plant would need to shut and an alert, the next highest level of emergency, would need to be declared. "Important equipment" at Three Mile Island-1 is protected against flooding up to about 315 feet above sea level, Sheehan said.

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.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s rules are a patchwork that needs to be reorganized and integrated into a new structure to improve safety, the agency’s staff told the five members of the commission on Tuesday at a meeting.The session was called to consider reforms after a tsunami caused the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan. But how speedily the commission will take up the recommendations is not clear.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2011, the nuclear industry agreed to bring in assorted extra equipment, including batteries and generators, to cope with circumstances beyond what the plants were designed for. Such preparations are among the reasons that the commission has suggested that American reactors are better protected than Fukushima was. But back then, because their focus was on a potential terrorist attack, much of that equipment was located in spots that were not protected against floods, staff officials said.

“The insight that we drew from that is that if you make these decisions in a more holistic way, and you are more cognizant of what kinds of protections you are trying to foster, perhaps you can do them in a more useful way,’’ Gary Holahan, a member of the staff task force that reported to the commission, said on Tuesday. Another likely area of restructuring is to review the distinction that the commission makes between “design basis” and “beyond design basis” accidents. In the 1960s and 1970s, when the commission and a predecessor agency, the Atomic Energy Commission, issued construction permits for the 104 commercial reactors now running, they established requirements for hardware and training based on the safety factors arising from the characteristics of each site, including its vulnerability to flood or earthquake. Those are known as design-basis accidents.A variety of additional requirements involving potential problems that would be more severe but less likely (beyond design-basis accidents) have been added over the years.

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.

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.

The switch — one that's tripped when Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station needs to safely shut down its reactor — was making an unusual buzzing sound.Plant engineers looked into it, made some repairs and overall didn't think it was a big deal.Turns out they didn't understand the problem as well as they thought they did. During a later test, the switch malfunctioned.

The kind of thinking that led to the switch failure at the nuclear power plant 19 miles north of Omaha has now landed the plant in some hot water with federal regulators. More than a mechanical failing, it suggests a culture that's out of step with the assume-nothing, take-no-chances, stay-on-top-of-things approach that's demanded when working with a technology where multiple errors and failures can cascade into very, very bad results. The switch issue came on the heels of another regulatory write-up Fort Calhoun had received for having inadequate plans for dealing with extremely massive flooding — flooding even greater than the historic high water levels seen at the plant this summer.

Fort Calhoun is one of only two out of the nation's 104 nuclear reactors currently on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's list of most-troubled plants, and one of only eight to land on it over the past decade.It's all caused a great deal of introspection within the plant's owner, the Omaha Public Power District. While the utility's top leaders say the plant remains a safe one, in hindsight they say the staff's safety focus had slipped."We had a slow, subtle decline,'' Gary Gates, OPPD's president and CEO, said in an interview during a plant visit last week. "This plant is used to running at a high level of performance. We're embarrassed to be in this situation. This is not how Fort Calhoun runs.

European regulators have been publishing progress reports on the program of stress tests being carried out at nuclear power plants in response to the Fukushima accident. In the weeks following the Fukushima accident, the European Council (EC) requested a review of safety at European nuclear power plants when faced by challenging situations. The criteria for the reviews, now known as stress tests, were produced for the European Commission by the European Nuclear Safety Regulatory Group (ENSREG). Progress reports were due to be submitted to the European Commission by 15 September, and many nuclear regulators and in some cases plant operators have published summaries, including regulators in Belgium, France, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK.

The reports vary from country to country, but the take-home story emerging from the reports is that Europe's nuclear plants are generally well placed to withstand beyond-design-basis events. Some plants have already put into practice initial measures to improve safety in response to Fukushima, and the tests are bringing to light more measures that need to be taken to improve resilience on a plant-by-plant basis.   Some measures that have already been identified are simple to put into place: for example, housekeeping routines have been changed to reduce the potential for seismic interactions (where non-safety related equipment could impact or fall onto seismically qualified equipment) at UK power plants.

stress tests focus on three areas highlighted by events in Japan: external threats from earthquake and flooding, specifically tsunami; the consequences of loss of safety functions, that is, a total loss of electricity supply (also referred to as station black-out, or SBO), the loss of ultimate heat sink (UHS), or both; and issues connected with the management of severe accidents. The UHS is a medium to which the residual heat from the reactor is transferred, for example the sea or a river.

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

Several new problems have been found at a Nebraska power plant that suffered flood damage earlier this year

tougher oversight for the Omaha Public Power District plant in Fort Calhoun will likely further delay its restart from early next year until sometime in the spring

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said none of the new issues represents a public safety threat, but the growing number of problems, combined with the prolonged shutdown, requires more scrutiny.

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.

After the typhoon hit Fukushima,massive scale of contamination is detected. It has been about 21.0 uSv/h around in Futabamachi all day long.

Even NHK reported that they detected double amount of cesium in the sea around reactor 3. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20110921/k10015758171000.html (Though this article reports the radiation level of around reactor 3,it mentions only cesium amount around reactor 2.) Also,Tepco reported they found the water level was raised by about 44 cm in the basement floor of reactor 1.

http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20110922-00000053-jij-soci However,in Onagawa nuc plant ,which is about 100km north to Fukushima plant, 2800 tons of water flowed in the the basement floor. Looking from this flooding in Onagawa nuc plant,it is natural to assume that the same or even worse scale of flooding happened to each reactor of Fukushima plant.

In July 2011 the NRDC Nuclear Program submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) twelve 10 CFR 2.206 petitions for immediate agency action and six 10 CFR 2.802 petitions for rulemaking that track the nuclear safety recommendations in the NRC Task Force's recently-released 90 day report on the lessons from the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. The 10 CFR 2.206 petitions ask the Commission to directly issue orders to nuclear power plant license holders on specific reactor safety upgrades. And the 10 CFR 2.802 rulemaking petitions request the NRC to commence a public process to alter specific rules that govern the nuclear industry's safety requirements. Prior to our petitions, the New York Times recently discussed the NRC's Near Term Task Force Review and also provided an explanation of the different processes that we have invoked. Here are brief descriptions of the specific petitions we filed.

10 CFR 2.206 Petitions nuc_11081201a.pdf 2.1 Order licensees to reevaluate the seismic and flooding hazards at their sites against current NRC requirements and guidance, and if necessary, update the design basis and SSCs important to safety to protect against the updated hazards.[p.30] nuc_11081201b.pdf 2.3 Order licensees to perform seismic and flood protection walkdowns to identify and address plant-specific vulnerabilities and verify the adequacy of monitoring and maintenance for protection features such as watertight barriers and seals in the interim period until longer term actions are completed to update the design basis for external events. [p.30] nuc_11081201c.pdf 4.2 Order licensees to provide reasonable protection for equipment currently provided pursuant to 10 CFR 50.54(hh)(2) from the effects of design-basis external events and to add equipment as needed to address multiunit events while other requirements are being revised and implemented.[p.39]

nuc_11081201i.pdf 8.1 Order licensees to modify the EOP technical guidelines (required by Supplement 1, “Requirements for Emergency Response Capability,” to NUREG-0737, issued January 1983 (GL 82-33), to (1) include EOPs, SAMGs, and EDMGs in an integrated manner, (2) specify clear command and control strategies for their implementation, and (3) stipulate appropriate qualification and training for those who make decisions during emergencies.[p. 49] nuc_11081201j.pdf 8.3 Order licensees to modify each plant’s technical specifications to conform to the above changes.[p.50]

Ever since the nuclear crisis erupted six months ago, the public has been clamoring to know when the damaged reactors at the Fu ku shi ma No. 1 power plant will be brought under control and when the nightmare will end. The government and Tokyo Electric Power Co., which runs the crippled plant, are working to bring the three reactors into cold shutdown by mid-January.

Cold shutdown means the temperature at the bottom of the pressure vessel, which holds the core, has been lowered to less than 100 degrees. This critical milestone, known as "Step 2" in Tepco's road map for containing the crisis, would limit the release of radioactive materials from the plant to less than 1 millisievert per year, a level that poses no health risks.

Since work at the plant is proceeding relatively smoothly, it appears likely the mid-January target will be met. But Fukushima No. 1 will still have a long way to go before the flooded plant's reactors are stable enough to be considered safe, experts warn. The main reason is the abundance of highly radioactive water.

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

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.

The disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March released far more radiation than the Japanese government has claimed. So concludes a study1 that combines radioactivity data from across the globe to estimate the scale and fate of emissions from the shattered plant. The study also suggests that, contrary to government claims, pools used to store spent nuclear fuel played a significant part in the release of the long-lived environmental contaminant caesium-137, which could have been prevented by prompt action. The analysis has been posted online for open peer review by the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Andreas Stohl, an atmospheric scientist with the Norwegian Institute for Air Research in Kjeller, who led the research, believes that the analysis is the most comprehensive effort yet to understand how much radiation was released from Fukushima Daiichi. "It's a very valuable contribution," says Lars-Erik De Geer, an atmospheric modeller with the Swedish Defense Research Agency in Stockholm, who was not involved with the study. The reconstruction relies on data from dozens of radiation monitoring stations in Japan and around the world. Many are part of a global network to watch for tests of nuclear weapons that is run by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization in Vienna. The scientists added data from independent stations in Canada, Japan and Europe, and then combined those with large European and American caches of global meteorological data.

Stohl cautions that the resulting model is far from perfect. Measurements were scarce in the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima accident, and some monitoring posts were too contaminated by radioactivity to provide reliable data. More importantly, exactly what happened inside the reactors — a crucial part of understanding what they emitted — remains a mystery that may never be solved. "If you look at the estimates for Chernobyl, you still have a large uncertainty 25 years later," says Stohl. Nevertheless, the study provides a sweeping view of the accident. "They really took a global view and used all the data available," says De Geer.

Lucas W Hixson may have uncovered a major abuse of the public trust by the NRC. In late March 2011 the NRC issued a directive that allowed the nuclear industry lobbyist group NEI to supply radiation monitoring data to the NRC who would then forward it to the EPA. March 24th the NRC discussed handing over radiation monitoring to nuclear industry lobbyists, April 14th RadNet was shut down and went back to routine monitoring schedules. This meant no ongoing food,water and air filter testing. Only the radiation level monitors were left operating. The EPA claimed that levels were going down as the reason for shutting down the expanded monitoring, but places like Idaho did not have the decreases seen at other sites.

The NRC directive put commercial nuclear power plant owners in charge of voluntarily providing the public with radiation monitoring data but it would be run through their nuclear industry lobbyists before it would then be provided to the NRC. Raw data was not provided directly to the NRC. Considering the massive US nuclear industry offensive to flood the media with propaganda downplaying the Fukushima nuclear disaster, they are hardly a reliable source to tell the public what the radiation levels are.

RadNet itself had many problems, stations didn’t work, some were not calibrated before the disaster. Even more disturbing is that the EPA does not even handle their own radiation monitoring network. The important function falls to a former Bush administration appointee running a business out of a rundown storefront in New Mexico. Under a $238,000 no bid contract Environmental Dimensions supposedly manages, maintains and operates RadNet, the only tool the public has to see if we are being subjected to nuclear fallout. The blogger that broke this story states that Environmental Dimensions has tripled their revenue in recent years. The company cites a different address as their mailing address. This shows up as a tiny house in Albuquerque. EDI was also part of a 12 million dollar contract in 2010 along with a couple of other contractors. The contract provides environmental & remediation services to the US Corps of Engineers. EDI claims to have been in business since 1990 but owner, Ms. Bradshaw worked for the DoD in 2006.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved Southern Co.’s (SO) application for the first licenses to build reactors in more than 30 years, with the chairman’s dissenting vote sparking new controversy over whether safety upgrades are needed after Japan’s 2011 disaster.

The split vote mars the start of a new atomic era as Southern builds the first U.S. nuclear reactor from a standardized design that promises to speed construction and reduce risks of runaway costs that plagued nuclear development during the 1970s and 1980s. “I simply cannot ignore what happened at Fukushima,” Chairman Gregory Jaczko said in a statement after the 4-1 vote today at NRC headquarters in Rockville, Maryland.

Jaczko said in an interview he couldn’t support the licenses without a binding agreement from Atlanta-based Southern and its partners that the new reactors would be able to handle a power failure, earthquake, flooding and other hazards that contributed to explosions and meltdowns at the stricken Japanese station. The licensing process “is a little bit like buying a house,” where home inspectors identify things that need to be fixed, Jaczko said. “Once you close on your house, which would be like issuing a license, you own those problems.”