As Sea Levels Rise, Are Coastal Nuclear Plants Ready? (nationalgeographic.com)

mdsolar writes with this National Geographic story about the danger of rising sea levels to low-lying power plants across the country. According to the story: "Just east of the Homestead-Miami Speedway, off Florida's Biscayne Bay, two nuclear reactors churn out enough electricity to power nearly a million homes. The Turkey Point plant is licensed to continue doing so until at least 2032. At some point after that, if you believe the direst government projections, a good part of the low-lying site could be underwater. So could at least 13 other U.S. nuclear plants, as the world's seas continue to rise. Their vulnerability, and that of many others, raises serious questions for the future."

Comments

At My Door

[JimSadler]

I am very close to a nuke that is right on the beach on Florida's Treasure Coast. Apparently to shut down a reactor and clean up everything that is contaminated is a process that takes years. This nuke has only one road that runs along the beach and if that road is swamped access to the plant would be by helicopter or boat, weather permitting. And that road frequently has challenges with hurricanes and spring tides as it is. I wonder if any planning is going on in regard to this situation.

Re:At My Door

[MightyYar]

The one one Hutchinson Island? I used to stay there every summer. This article is (surprise!) alarmist. Read carefully, it claims nothing prior to 2032 - and makes references only to things that could happen in the fairly distant future. Compared to the cleanup costs, shoring up a road or building a berm along the Indian River would be pretty cheap.

Re:At My Door

[BitZtream]

You do realize that if the road gets wiped out while they are trying to decommission the plant ... they'll just build one on a bridge, right? As a Floridian, you're probably aware of just how good Florida's construction crews are at rebuilding after the REGULAR hurricanes and tropical that come pretty much every year ...

Building roads and bridges is pretty trivial and cheap compared to decommissioning a nuclear power station. And do you know how they brought a lot of the construction materials to the site ... probably by barge actually (thats what happened at the Crystal River plant)

And decommissioning takes years because its cheaper to wait out certain things than to deal with them while hot. You have to shut the planet down, get it into cold shutdown (no need for active cooling measures), remove the fuel, then wait for all that shit to 'cool down' radioactively enough that it doesn't require robots to work on it. During that time you go tear down all the other crap thats not radioactive and wait for 10 years. Then you come back and get the rest of it with men in some radiation suites that cost about 1000 times less than trying to do it with the robots you'd have had to design, build and use if you tried to do it immediately after shutdown.

But to answer you actual question.

Yes, thats all been thought of, before the plant was even built, its all part of the initial environmental studies and is public record if you really want to go digging for it. At one point Looked up all that information for the Crystal River plant, so unless the state was thinking completely differently between the studies for the two stations we're referring to, yes, they've thought of all that already. It might no longer apply (environment changes, hence this discussion), but its been considered.

Re:At My Door

[Zak3056]

I'm shocked, shocked, that an alarming article about nuclear power was submitted by a guy named mdsolar.

Re:At My Door

[Anonymous Coward]

He is a Shill's Shill.

Legendary among Solar Trolls.

Re:At My Door

[TWX]

They had made plans for the storage of nuclear waste, and spent billions of dollars preparing the facility. They were then told that they couldn't do that and had to stop.

Note, I am not discussing the technical merits of the facility in question, I am merely pointing out that there was a plan.

Re:At My Door

[Anonymous Coward]

A SJW's idea (if we understand what 'social justice' means) of having a conversation is everyone talks without some immature fuckwhippet in the corner disrupting the conversation because he doesn't like how gay/black/straight/white/Muslim/Christian some other participants are.

Translation: Everyone talks as long as they agree with me. Anyone who disagrees with me is an immature fuckwit who deserves to be silenced.

Non Issue

[klingens]

Yes the sealevels will rise, but they already rise with every hurricane or tides of the moon.
After Fukushima everyone knows that you need big ass dams, flood walls, protected and working backup generators etc.

If you build a 10m high floodwall or a 11m high one to also protect against global warming induced sea level rise simply doesn't really matter. If someone hasn't already built said 10-15m high flood wall, it's not global warming that is an issue but the regulatory commission in your country. A much more immediate problem too.

Re:Poor planning

[dave420]

There you go again confusing sea ice with land ice. You do this every single time, and it gets pointed out to you every single time. Your failure to take on board such simple information is staggering, but would go quite some way to explain why you believe abject nonsense in the face of scientific rigour. Or, maybe, you do understand the difference, but are prepared to lie in order to make some point. Pick one. Please. It's tragic, but fascinating.