A fire in an electrical switch room on Tuesday briefly knocked out cooling for a pool holding spent nuclear fuel at the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant outside Omaha, Neb., plant officials said.
The safety of deep pools used to store used radioactive fuel at nuclear plants has been an issue since the accident at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant in March. If the cooling water a pool is lost, the used nuclear fuel could catch fire and release radiation.
As ProPublica reported earlier, fire safety is a continuing concern at the country’s 104 commercial reactors, as is the volume of spent fuel piling up at plants.
Officials at Fort Calhoun said the situation at their plant came nowhere near to Fukushima’s. They said it would have taken 88 hours for the heat produced by the fuel to boil away the cooling water.
Live Gold Silver Prices
Discussion
No comments yet.