Mike J sends this piece from the Guardian, detailing the way the UK government worked with the nuclear industry to reassure citizens that nuclear power is safe in the wake of Fukushima. Also in the Guardian: Japanese children from the Fukushima area have radioactive isotopes of cesium in their urine.
Meanwhile, back home, the media I’ve seen on the Fort Calhoun plant in Nebraska, which is surrounded by flood waters, has been generally better than expected. Even though the plant is in cold shutdown, the new acknowledgement of the issues with stored fuel has led to coverage like this that acknowledges the danger of station blackout even in cold shutdown.
“The question is, ‘Do you still have power?’ ” said Andrew C. Kadak, a former professor of nuclear engineering at M.I.T. “If they’ve got that, the plant can sit there until the water recedes. The Fukushima lesson is really that you’ve got to have electricity.”
Last year, the NRC required Fort Calhoun to beef up their flood defenses, and the NRC is doing additional analysis to determine the effect of failure of the upstream dams on the plant. My question is why they approved building a plant so close to a major, flood-prone river in the first place.