Flood waters and damage from tropical storm Florence restricted access to the Brunswick nuclear power plant in North Carolina over the weekend, leading operator Duke Energy to issue a “notice of unusual event,” according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Such a notice is the lowest emergency classification at the nuclear industry regulator.
Duke Energy on Friday shut down the two reactors at the plant, which stands about 4 miles from the Atlantic Coast, as the storm approached. The reactors remained offline Monday.
The alert “was based solely on site access issues for personal vehicles,” NRC spokesman Roger Hannah said by email Monday. “There is limited access to and from the site … but the NRC has no current concerns about plant conditions, staffing or flooding in the area affecting the plant’s safety functions.”
Plant staff and NRC inspectors on-site at Brunswick were unable to leave or be replaced by fresh personnel, the Raleigh, N.C., News & Observer reported late Monday morning.
“Employees are able to come and go from the plant, however travel beyond the local area is challenging. There are about 300 employees on site,” Duke spokeswoman Karen Williams said later in the day.
The storm by Monday had been connected to no fewer than 23 deaths in the Carolinas, according to news reports.
Prior to Florence’s landfall Friday, the NRC and nuclear utilities said the then-hurricane would not endanger radioactive spent fuel stored on-site at facilities in the Carolinas and Virginia. Brunswick was the only nuclear power plant forced to shut down due to the storm, along with the Global Nuclear Fuel facility in Wilmington, N.C.
The NRC, in part, credited the strong safety situation to measures required of U.S. nuclear power plants following the March 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi facility in Japan. Three reactors at the site largely melted down in the wake of a massive earthquake and tsunami.
