Update: Just as at Fukushima, the story about an endangered nuclear power plant is coming out in drips and drabs. CNN now reports that a water filled berm sixteen feet in width at the base and eight feet high collapsed on Sunday when a piece of machinery came in contact with it. OPPD officials are saying that the plant is still protected "to the level it would have been if the aqua berm had not been added." Of course that tortured syntax says nothing about the original level of reactor protection or why the berm was added. Last October the owner was cited by the NRC for inadequate flood preparations. A ten mile evacuation zone was declared at the plant site.
On the other side of the world three reactor cores and four fuel assemblies are melting at Fukushima and fallout is now reaching the west coast of the United States. Radioactive isotopes blown across the Pacific from the disaster zone are now detected in foodstuffs in the US. A respected nuclear engineer stated that "Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind". No overstatement there because the slag at the bottom of the containments, if it has not already melted through, contains extremely radioactive isotopes that have half lives of hundreds of years and in the case of plutonium239, 24,100 years! But the real extent of the disaster did not stop the nuclear apologists in the British government from colluding with the industry to minimize the disaster's impact. Japanese engineers were aware of the Mark I design flaws for years but did nothing to correct them. The failed design at Fukushima is shared with 23 older GE plants still operating in the US. Still taking Exelon Corporation contributions, Mr. President?
{27.6.11}This video is from ABC news and highlights the growing concern that the Ft. Calhoun nuclear plant {"Ft. Calhoun"} near Omaha, NE may suffer a disasterous breakdown if floodwaters penetrate the reactor's containment building and cause a loss of power accident. Emergency generators were required to cool spent fuel tanks when floodwaters penetrated a barrier protecting electrical transformers (No commercial endorsement intended):