Legalectric

Remember the flooding info and maps I’d posted a couple of days ago, noting that two nuclear plants in Nebraska were in the flood inundation area?

Low-level emergency declared at nuclear power plant

Well, Frieda Berryhill sent this photo of the flooding at the Ft. Calhoun nuclear plant:

Check the video, Omaha Public Power District – OPPD didn’t want the news crew filming the flooding!!!  And thankfully, they reported that point:

Flooding nuclear power station property

As if the flooding isn’t enough, they had an electrical fire, and shut down the spent fuel pond pumps to aid in fighting it.  There are many articles posted on this, all the IDENTICAL AP article, and not one mention of flooding:

Nuke plant stopped spent fuel pumps to fight fire

Here’s a local paper with some additional details:

Smoke causes scare at nuclear plant

Omaha Public Power District’s release on the flood:

OPPD Declares Notification of Unusual Event

June 6, 2011

As mentioned last week, the rising Missouri River waters have reached a level where OPPD is declaring a Notification of Unusual Event (NOUE) at its Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station. According to projections from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the river level at the plant site is expected to reach 1,004 feet above mean sea level later this week, and is expected to remain above that level for more than one month. OPPD notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and emergency management agencies in Nebraska and Iowa of the declaration.

A NOUE is the least-serious of four emergency classifications that are standard in the U.S. nuclear industry. Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station will not move out of this emergency classification until it is confident the water will remain below the 1,004-foot level.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission notes that a Notification of Unusual Event indicates events are in process or have occurred which indicate potential impacts to the plant. No release of radioactive material requiring offsite response or monitoring has occurred or is expected.

Fort Calhoun was in safe shutdown mode since early April for refueling the plant, and remains in that condition. In addition to the existing flood-protection at the plant, OPPD employees and contractors have built earth berms and sandbagged around the switchyards and additional buildings on site. They also are filling water-filled berms around the plant and other major buildings on site, have staged additional diesel fuel inside the Protected Area and are building additional overhead power lines to provide another option for power for the plant’s administration building, Training Center and one of its warehouses.

Yesterday the TVA’s Kingston coal plant’s coal ash sludge pit blew a sidewall and spewed all over near Harriman, Tennessee, into the Tennessee River.  over 400 acres were covered in sludge.  There was at least 2.6 million cubic yards or 500 million gallons of coal ash and an entire watershed is affected.  That’s really toxic stuff, coal ash.  Lots of heavy metals are left, lots of hazardous chemicals, there’s mercury, lead, arsenic, and is this coal slag also radioactive like much in the Dakotas?  How will they deal with this?

IF YOU WERE HIT BY THIS COAL ASH FLOOD- CALL TVA: 865-717-4006

Lots of links now, I’m updating now and then.

It’s now in The Tennessean:

Flood of sludge breaks TVA dike

Here’s an article with photos and video:

Video and photos from Knoxnews.com

From WYMT:

Extensive Damage After Sludge-Slide in Roane Co. Tennessee

Here’s Volunteer TV with some more aerial video (and the odd comment that “The damage is done, all that’s left now is the clean up!”  Oh… OK…

Volunteer TV – TVA eyes possible cause of mudslide

From WTVC – Chattanooga:

TVA Dike Bursts Flooding 15 Houses

From WMCTV – Memphis:

Dike burst floods homes near TVA plant

They don’t know what caused it and yet say there is no danger from the other sludge pits in the area… say what?

TVA ash pond breach: Resident says area has ‘changed forever’

The sludge has encroached 10 feet farther into his yard than the usual winter pool level, and the scenic landscape is replaced by 15-foot-high piles of ash.

“It’s changed forever, I don’t see how this can be brought back,” Copeland said.

Here’s Dave Cooper’s post on Ruminations from the Distant Hills:

Disaster in Tennessee

From YouTube, the video from Knoxnews of this disaster (this is a must see):

This could be one of the worst environmental disasters ever.  One more example of the dangers and inherent problems with burning coal.  Does the TVA have a “get out of jail free” card, like nuclear does in Price-Anderson Act?  How can the clean up this mess, and how will the coal plant be held accountable?  How will the coal industry prevent this from happening again?

It’s not like this is something new. Thanks to It’s Getting Hot in Here for a look at history, least we forget…

It happened in Martin County, Kentucky, in 2000:

Martin County Sludge Spill

It happened in Logan County, West Virginia, where 125 people died, 1,200+ were injured and over 4,000 were homeless:

Buffalo Creek Flood

I’m looking for updates on this… and I found them — try “TVA” and “flood” and not “TVA” and “coal ash.”  Seems it’s not well acknowledged that it’s coal ash!

Dike breaks — ash slide damages homes in Tennessee

And here we go national:

USA Today – TVA dike bursts in Tenn.; 15 homes flooded

TVA dike bursts in Tenn; damaging a dozen homes

SF Chronicle: Dike bursts in Tenn. damaging a dozen homes (AP)

Ash leak fuels debate on risks of coal waste

By Josh Flory (Contact)
Tuesday, December 23, 2008

The ash that burst out of a TVA retention pond on Monday is the sort of waste that has gotten scrutiny from federal regulators and lawmakers in recent months.

The mixture in question was made of water and fly ash, a fine particle that’s one of the by-products of burning coal to generate electricity. The ash is collected by scrubbers that aim to clean up emissions from power-plant smokestacks, and it includes trace elements of materials like arsenic and lead.

In June, a subcommittee in the U.S. House of Representatives held an oversight hearing to examine how the government should address the health and environmental risks of coal combustion waste, including fly ash.

Mary Fox, an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, testified at this summer’s hearing and said in written testimony that “Risks to human health are increased if people are exposed to coal combustion waste.”

In an interview on Monday, Fox said she was reassured about reports that the Kingston spill was a release of wet ash because that means it wouldn’t have gotten into the air as dust.

Fox said generally the concern about fly ash is in regard to long-term exposures – from leaching into the groundwater, for example – and said that when it comes to a spill, the main exposure issues initially will be for people who are cleaning up the mess.

“If it did impact someone’s home,” she said, “you’d want them to stay away from it and not try to be scooping it up with your own broom and dustpan, that kind of thing. It’s not something that you’d want to try and clean up yourself.”

In addition to state and local authorities, the Environmental Protection Agency also dispatched a coordinator and a contractor to the site. EPA is currently reviewing its regulation of coal combustion waste, including fly ash, and one of the documents involved in that process is a 2007 report which found 24 proven cases of damage to ground or surface water from the disposal of coal combustion wastes.

Lisa Evans, an attorney with Earthjustice, a California-based nonprofit law firm, said that in recent years, ash impoundments also have failed in Pennsylvania and Georgia. “Unfortunately this isn’t an isolated instance,” she said “The surface impoundments are not safe places to keep coal ash in general.”

On the other hand, fly ash can be recycled into something useful. David Goss, executive director of the American Coal Ash Association, said ash that meets certain quality standards can be used as a substitute for Portland cement in concrete, and also has uses including soil and waste stabilization. Goss indicated that heavy metals are usually found only in low concentrations, and that they are diluted when stored in liquid.

While he wasn’t familiar with the exact details of the Kingston spill, Goss said that typically the “levels of these concentrations are low enough not to deem them a public hazard.”