Spent Fuel Storage at Neb. Nuke Plant Submerged
Jun 23, 2011 20:02:36 GMT -5
Post by PrisonerOfHope on Jun 23, 2011 20:02:36 GMT -5
The spent fuel containment structure is OUTSIDE the flood protection berm.
More:
www.rense.com/general94/ftcal.htm
www.idealist.ws
"Calhoun stores its spent fuel in ground-level pools which are underwater anyway - but they are open at the top. When the Missouri river pours in there, it's going to make Fukushima look like an x-ray. The fuel is all sitting OUTSIDE the reactor waiting to wash away or explode - which will destroy about 15,000 square miles of what used to be the corn belt.
More:
www.rense.com/general94/ftcal.htm
The Missouri River is experiencing extreme seasonal flooding and one reactor in Nebraska is now at a lower elevation than the water level of the river it abuts while a second reactor in the state is barely on dry ground. The Omaha energy utility that operates the first reactor has as its first and greatest line of defense against the rising water a several-foot high barrier called AquaDam, which is currently keeping water at bay. The problem with the focus of the energy utility, the mainstream media and even most activists is that they are focused on rising river water as a flooding threat while neglecting the possibility of mass destruction posed by a raging major river on structures in, on or along the river.
When we are talking about the flooding of a major river that drains a major river basin, it is flow - or 'discharge' (which increases almost exponentially with each foot of vertical rise near the probable maximum flood level) that will bring the earliest destructive forces upon the plant and its barriers. Although the AquaDam 'wall' (which is the main barrier keeping at bay one or two feet of water from flooding the Ft. Calhoun Station) is eight-feet tall, the 'dam' will fail well before water nears spillage over its top.* At the height of spillage - a river surface elevation of 1,012 feet - the patented plastic-dam would be surrounded by raging waters flowing at around 1 million cubic feet per second (cfs) (see graph below). At pressures even significantly less than this AquaDam would either tip over from excessive 'lateral forces' or it would be destroyed by punctures by tree-trunks, metal objects and other debris. While the water-filled tubular barrier certainly would be suitable to protect a nuclear power plant located at a distant floodplain location of a river, the Ft. Calhoun site is situated virtually on the banks of the rising Missouri River and is on the vulnerable bank of a river turn - the plastic dam will provide no protection when river discharges at the reactor site become significantly worse. The U.S Army Corps of Engineers has predicted for decades that a worse case flood could sink the Ft. Calhoun nuclear reactor site under 10 feet of flowing water - that would be a river height of 1,014 feet above sea level. The Missouri River wouldn't 'flow' at that point - it would be more of a vicious aquatic monster sending actually 1,200,000 cubic feet per second along the fasting flowing parts and destroying just about anything in its path - this is about the mean annual discharge of the mouth of the Congo River in Africa. (1 million cubic feet per second, what is what concrete and some earth dams are built to hold back, would fill an oil tanker, like the Exxon Valdez, in a matter of seconds. A plastic barrier would be no match for that current.
When we are talking about the flooding of a major river that drains a major river basin, it is flow - or 'discharge' (which increases almost exponentially with each foot of vertical rise near the probable maximum flood level) that will bring the earliest destructive forces upon the plant and its barriers. Although the AquaDam 'wall' (which is the main barrier keeping at bay one or two feet of water from flooding the Ft. Calhoun Station) is eight-feet tall, the 'dam' will fail well before water nears spillage over its top.* At the height of spillage - a river surface elevation of 1,012 feet - the patented plastic-dam would be surrounded by raging waters flowing at around 1 million cubic feet per second (cfs) (see graph below). At pressures even significantly less than this AquaDam would either tip over from excessive 'lateral forces' or it would be destroyed by punctures by tree-trunks, metal objects and other debris. While the water-filled tubular barrier certainly would be suitable to protect a nuclear power plant located at a distant floodplain location of a river, the Ft. Calhoun site is situated virtually on the banks of the rising Missouri River and is on the vulnerable bank of a river turn - the plastic dam will provide no protection when river discharges at the reactor site become significantly worse. The U.S Army Corps of Engineers has predicted for decades that a worse case flood could sink the Ft. Calhoun nuclear reactor site under 10 feet of flowing water - that would be a river height of 1,014 feet above sea level. The Missouri River wouldn't 'flow' at that point - it would be more of a vicious aquatic monster sending actually 1,200,000 cubic feet per second along the fasting flowing parts and destroying just about anything in its path - this is about the mean annual discharge of the mouth of the Congo River in Africa. (1 million cubic feet per second, what is what concrete and some earth dams are built to hold back, would fill an oil tanker, like the Exxon Valdez, in a matter of seconds. A plastic barrier would be no match for that current.
www.idealist.ws
