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Thursday, June 9, 2011

Fire Knocks Out Spent Fuel Cooling at Ft. Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant

You know how people just love to say no one could have foreseen?

Well people were asking me a few days ago why did you write the diary Would a little American nuclear emergency make you look up? We're having one you're such a fear mongerer you should have written your diary from the perspective of the flood.

I wrote that diary so people couldn't say who could have foreseen.

I foresaw and I'm nobodies nuclear engineer.

A fire in an electrical switch room on Tuesday briefly knocked out cooling for a pool holding spent nuclear fuel at the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant outside Omaha, Neb., plant officials said.

The safety of deep pools used to store used radioactive fuel at nuclear plants has been an issue since the accident at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant in March. If the cooling water a pool is lost, the used nuclear fuel could catch fire and release radiation.

snip

Officials at Fort Calhoun said the situation at their plant came nowhere near to Fukushima's. They said it would have taken 88 hours for the heat produced by the fuel to boil away the cooling water.

Workers restored cooling in about 90 minutes, and plant officials said the temperature in the pool only increased by two degrees.

The fire, reported at 9:30 a.m., led to the loss of electrical power for the system that circulates cooling water through the spent fuel pool, according to a report from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. A chemical fire suppression system discharged, and the plant's fire brigade cleared smoke from the room and reported that the fire was out at 10:20 a.m., the NRC said.

Pro Publica link

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