NRC to Army Corps of Engineers: What if dam breaks?

Last Monday, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Greg Jaczko toured the flooded Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant on the edge of the historically swollen Missouri River. Although 2.5 feet of floodwaters are lapping at the containment and auxiliary buildings housing the reactor and emergency safety and cooling systems, as well as the water intake and emergency feedwater pumps, Jaczko assured the media and the public that the facilities were qualified up to 1,014 feet above sea level -- leaving a margin of about 6 feet above the highest projected flood stage. But apparently unaccounted for in that assurance of safety from the NRC was the risk of a dam upstream on the Missouri breaching and releasing a wall of water down the river. As the Omaha World-Herald reports, two days after Jaczko's visit, the NRC staff made a formal request for such an analysis to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in charge of six major dams upstream. At the bottom of that news story is a 20 minute audio recording of Jaczko first addressing, then answering questions from, a room full of Omaha Public Power District officials and workers, as well as some media reporters. Jaczko also announced that NRC and the Army Corps of Engineers will be in daily telephone conference call communication about flooding safety issues at Ft. Calhoun and Cooper atomic reactors. An expert on the Fort Peck Dam has warned that its failure could cause a domino effect failure of the other five major dams downstream, one of which is not far upriver from Ft. Calhoun. But hydro-geologist Bob Criss warns that not only Nebraska's atomic reactors, but also the radioactive waste dump at the West Lake Landfill near St. Louis, Missouri is at risk -- also begging the question, what about the Callaway atomic reactor near the Missouri River in central Missouri?