Nuclear Power Plants Brace for Hurricane Florence

Two nuclear plants in Hurricane Florence’s path are vulnerable to hurricane-force winds and flooding, according to the watchdog group the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). As Florence approaches the North Carolina coast Thursday, the Brunswick plant near Wilmington, North Carolina, and the Surry plant near Williamsburg, Virginia, might be unprepared for the up-to-13-foot storm surges and heavy flooding expected.

Dave Lochbaum, the nuclear safety project director at UCS, said that it’s hard to tell just how vulnerable these plants are because the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has not publicly released the required flood-protection preparedness reports it required following the Fukushima disaster of 2011. That’s when an earthquake-induced tsunami caused three reactor-core meltdowns and a hydrogen explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant in Japan, forcing thousands of people to evacuate.