UPDATE: Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant Status, video of plant without berm, etc.

URL to recent video showing extent of flooding:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgD7LP1FCew

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Monday June 27, 2011
Flood test not over for nuke plant

ONLY IN THE WORLD-HERALD
By Nancy Gaarder and Sam Womack
World-Herald Staff Writers

Two outside lines of defense against flooding failed Sunday at Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station, shifting the plant to backup electricity for 12 hours.

On Monday, the Omaha Public Power District was studying whether it could patch and refill the temporary water dam that burst. When the dam ruptured, it allowed floodwater to fill in around the plant to a depth of more than two feet, said OPPD spokesman Jeff Hanson.

Sunday's development offers more evidence that the relentlessly rising Missouri River is testing the flood-worthiness of an American nuclear power plant like never before. The now-idle plant, 19 miles north of Omaha, has become an island. And unlike other plants previously affected by high water, Fort Calhoun faces months of flooding.

Also on Monday, the head of the nation's nuclear regulatory agency, his lieutenants and congressional representatives toured the plant.

“It's pretty jarring to see a boat tied up to the nuclear power plant. ... It's an intense operation going on there, particularly with water surrounding all the buildings,” said U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry. “There's no water inside; they have multiple, redundant systems in place.”

The plant disconnected from the electrical grid Sunday morning and ran on electricity supplied by its main, on-site backup source: two diesel-fueled generators. Federal regulators require nuclear plants to have generators to keep a plant running in case its main power source is interrupted.

Hanson said a piece of heavy equipment moving sand on the dry side of the water-filled dam, “brushed up” against it, causing it to rupture. The utility disconnected from the grid because the river water leaked through a cement barrier installed to protect the plant's main transformer.

“It did not work; it did not keep the water out,” he said.

Floodwater rose a couple of feet inside that barrier, Hanson said. Crews switched off the electricity feeding it to assure that it wouldn't be damaged, and it was not, he said. They pumped out the water, sealed the leaks in the cement barrier and restarted the transformer.

Disconnecting from the grid “gave us time to ascertain that all was fine,” he said.

The 2,000-foot-long water-filled dam that ringed the plant collapsed about 1:25 a.m. Sunday.


UPDATE:
AquaDam (aka "water weenie") failed. No one should be surprised--HELLO? It was made out of rubber and sharp things float in floods. But one thing I didn't anticipate was that some of the equipment there to fight the flood would "brush against" it and rupture it.

Did you know workers have to scramble across a catwalk to reach the plant? Parking lot is flooded, no other access.

Head of the NRC was supposed to visit Ft. Calhoun this morning.

Water was in the containment unit, but it didn't cause any problems. I would REALLLLLY like to know more about that one.

The worst is yet to come--there is a helluva lot of water coming from the tributaries towards the Missouri River.

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http://enenews.com/river-water-now-surrounds-spent-fuel-pool-building-and-main-r...

River water now surrounds spent fuel pool building and main reactor building at Ft. Calhoun after collapse of water-filled dam — Barriers at entrances to keep water out

June 27th, 2011 at 07:16 PM

[...] Because of the collapsed water-filled dam, river water surrounds the main reactor building, mechanical building, spent fuel pool building and other structures.
Barriers at entrances to the buildings are keeping that water from entering, [Omaha Public Power District spokesman Jeff Hanson] said. A “minor” amount of water did seep into the plant’s turbine building, he said, and was pumped out. [...]

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http://www.omaha.com/article/20110626/NEWS01/706269898#flooding-the-worst-is-yet...

Published Sunday June 26, 2011

FLOODING: THE WORST IS YET TO COME

By David Hendee
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

ONLY IN THE WORLD-HERALD
Imagine roughly 55 million acres — the entire surface of Nebraska and southwest Iowa — covered in a foot of water. Now imagine trying to funnel all that water down a drainage canal surrounded by airports and homes, businesses and farms. You can begin to grasp the unprecedented, slow-developing danger facing folks from Montana to Missouri from the Great Flood of 2011. In more than a century of record-keeping, the nation's longest river has never coped with more water.

Floodwaters are breaching levees, triggering evacuations, closing highways, swamping thousands of acres of farmland, destroying homes and lapping against hurriedly reinforced floodwalls protecting cities, airports and power plants, including two in Nebraska that produce nuclear power. The damage bill will tally in the hundreds of millions.

As bad as it's been, the hardest parts are still ahead, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the river system's managers. “It's going to be a devastating season in terms of how the levees do,” said Brig. Gen. John McMahon, commander of the corps' Northwestern Division. “There's going to be a lot of pain and suffering.”

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