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Florida Nuclear Plants Pass Safety Review March 15, 2011 | WMFE - Governor Rick Scott says Florida is prepared to meet any catastrophic challenges that might threaten the state's nuclear reactors. Following the massive earthquake and tsunami that has led to possible nuclear meltdowns in Japan, Gov. Scott asked his emergency management director to review Florida's emergency action plan. All five of the state's nuclear plants passed the review ordered by Gov. Scott over the weekend. Bryan Koon, Director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said all of Florida's reactors are built to withstand a Category 5 hurricane.
There are five nuclear plants in the state. Florida Power and Light operates two plants at the Turkey Point complex south of Miami and two at Port St. Lucie, about 125 miles Southeast of Orlando. North Carolina-based Progress Energy operates a single reactor at Crystal River along the Gulf Coast north of Tampa. Progress Energy spokeswoman Jessica Lambert said the Crystal River plant is ready for any contingency including hurricanes and storm surge. “Our plant's emergency backup plans are designed and built to withstand the impact of all historical disasters for our area, specifically Crystal River.” Lambert said. “Those would be your natural phenomena, your hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes and flooding. We have the additional backup redundancy systems for the different power supplies that would be necessary in the worst-case scenario.” The Japanese nuclear plants had redundancy systems too, but backup generators failed because of flooding caused by the tsunami. Lambert says Crystal River is ready for that possibility |
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