I love the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. I was born and grew up in close proximity to both. When I went to public school the Missouri River was one of the school district boundaries. When I was a teenager, I rode my motorcycle for miles and miles up and down the river road for the sheer joy of it. When I went to college, my university competed in the Missouri Valley Conference.
I love history. I appreciate the historical roles of these rivers in America's history. I have some firsthand knowledge and have studied far more about the turbulent history of what I think of as Jefferson's America, the part of us, where I grew up, that the brilliant, if weird, 3rd President bought from Napoleon in one of the sharpest trades in history. I also respect power of these rivers, as I respect the potential for anthropogenic climate change to fuel increasingly dangerous and unstable snowfall and rainfall patterns leading to ever higher floods in the vulnerable valleys of the heartland.
I have never lived in Nebraska or Iowa, where people are most at risk if something goes badly wrong as the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant sits in the Missouri River flowing around it. But I have more than ample personal reason to pay close attention to what is happening there, and I don't like what I see.
As I noted yesterday, the only reason that Omaha Power made improvements that possibly saved the plant from extremely difficult problems at the current level of flooding was that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission forced the company to make improvements despite the company's insistence that its old plans were just fine. So, how are those improvements working out?
So far, so good, as far as we know. The old preparedness level was a 1009 foot flood (above mean seal level), which has now been improved to a reported 1014, while the same reportage places the river at a maximum of 1008 feet, barring extraordinary rains.
But still, I worry. Our enemies in this situation are time, gravity and water. These are the forces that carved the Grand Canyon and they are certainly equal to taking out the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant if the opportunity arises. The problem is that analyses of the flood level protections assume the foundations of the plant will remain intact, and not be undercut by flood currents as the river flows around and through the facility. It is not apparent to this writer that Omaha Power or the NRC has ever analyzed the potential for foundational damage to the plant and its infrastructure from river erosion during prolonged flood of six or more weeks.
So I worry. And I take to Google Earth to see what it says about the elevation of the site. I consult the Google Earth community for the latest updates on nuclear sites (many of which are very low res for security reasons) and fly to Fort Calhoun.
The plant site lies Northeast of the town and contiguous to the river. According to Google Earth . . .
OK, perhaps some will say I'm a sucker to trust Google Earth for this kind of information, but there is a considerable community associated with this resource where many observers find that the elevation observations reported seem fairy accurate if carefully obtained, though some members of that community find them less so.
According to Google Earth, the elevation of the river at the location of the plant at what appears to be normal stage, is 985 feet. All of the areas surrounding the plant site are at 1000 feet or less. To the Southwest, West and Northwest of the plant site is a bluff, above which the town sits safely at 1060 feet or more.
The Post Office in Fort Calhoun, for instance, sits at 1090 feet. Even more interesting, it sits barely 2 km from the Omaha Power's reactor.
I don't completely trust these Google Earth numbers for accurate, absolute elevation measurements. The relative measurements appear more reliable, however, and indicate that this nuclear power plant was intentionally built in the flood plain.
This could mean that the Fort Calhoun Plant rests on foundations dug deeply into alluvial deposits and elevated above the plain by landfill. However it is built, and whatever material the plant is dug into, it's designers no doubt hoped it would never have to sustain months sitting in the middle of a flooding river.
At the very least, the lesson of Fort Calhoun may be, add major river flood plains to the list of places where it is really stupid to build nuclear power plants (Main Heading: Planet Earth).