U.S. Nuclear Facilities: Wildfires and Floods Threaten Three in Los Alamos and Nebraska, AP begins Investigation of Safety

Wildfires and floods threaten three major nuclear power plants in the US, forcing residents to evacuate and authorities to come up with ways to explain the situation and avoid danger. The Associated Press began a four part investigative series looking into the safety of our nuclear facilities and the relationship between the nuclear industry and its regulators. The results were shocking. The AP report shows that government and industry have been working together to relax safety standards to keep aging reactors within the rules. As equipment has approached or violated safety limits, regulators and reactor operators have loosened or bent the rules to keep them in operation. Failed cables. busted seals. Broken nozzles, clogged screens, cracked concrete, dented containers, corroded metals and rusty underground pipes are all problems linked to aging that could escalate dangers in the event of an accident. The series also found that there have been leaks of radioactive tritium, often from corroded underground piping, at three-quarters of U.S. commercial nuclear power sites and more than 90 of the nation's 104 operating reactors have been allowed to run at higher power levels for many years, raising the radiation risk in a major accident. As America's nuclear power plants have aged, the once-rural areas around them have become far more crowded and much more difficult to evacuate. Populations around the facilities have swelled as much as 4 1/2 times since 1980. The AP found serious weaknesses in plans for evacuations around the plants, including emergency drills that do not move people and fail to test different scenarios involving the weather or the time of day. The AP investigation comes three months after a tsunami born from an earthquake caused a nuclear crisis at the Fukushima nuclear complex in Japan. The March 11 natural disaster swamped backup generators, disabled cooling systems, caused fuel melts and explosions, and released vast amounts of radiation into the grounds and sea.