Well, this is pretty serious. The 8 foot tall aquadam or aquaberm, a 2000 foot long rubber hose essentially, filled with water, designed and set in place to protect the main buildings of the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station collapsed around 1:30am last night (Sunday 6/26). You can see the aquaberm as the long black tube around the main buildings in the top picture taken at least 1 week ago and published in the NY Times:
This apparently innudated the plants transformers with floodwater. Must have shorted them out something incredible.
Here is the article in the Omaha World Herald:
http://www.omaha.com/article/20110626/NEWS01/110629782/1007
So now you've read the article, but what does it mean, and what is true?
First off, they have switched crucial power to diesel backup generators. But the reporters fail to adress the crucial questions: Do the diesel generators need to run their electricity through these same soaked transformers????
If not, then the diesel generators must be of voltages that can hook direct to crucial circuits controlling spent rod cooling in both the main reactor and the spent fuel pool.
Secondly, the article says they are working to restore off-site power (power that comes to them via powerlines). Well, will this power be any good to them now if the transformers are fried???
It is simply not an insane question to ask now, if the 88 hour countdown to spent fuel rods boiling off their cooling waters has begun. Luckily tommorrwo the NRC president visits town, and maybe that will put extra pressure on the plant to be honest with the public.
Frankly this is step one of a no more than 3 step sequence to disaster. Remeber that at Fukushima, it was not that they didn't have diesel generators, it was that they had nothing dry to hook them up to to maintain cooling.
I am sorry if this post is alarming, but we now need specific answers before something radioactive at the plant starts steaming.
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