Agenda - 05-02-2002 - Agenda - Laserfiche WebLink

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Page 3 O. Considering the resistance that CP&L has to accepting NC WARN's plan to store the spent fuel rods, would NC WARN consider and have support for a legal recourse against CP&L for refusing to comply or offer a reasonable alternative? A. On May 15`h, NC WARN and other organizations filed a legal petition seeking to have N. C. Attorney General Roy Cooper take action to prevent further transports to and stockpiling of spent fuel at Shearon Harris. O. NRC offered potassium iodide (KI) to the 34 states with nuclear facilities. Twelve states have taken them upon this offer. Why didn't NC accept? Should we keep it on hand? The U.S. FDA reports 10.5 million kids in Poland and 7 million adults in Poland took and reportedly benefited from KI following Chernobyl. A. The NRC urged each state to consider the KI offer. Governor Easley declined, saying that the state will instead rely on "rapid evacuation." KI can help protect against thyroid cancer from exposure to radioactive iodine, but has no protective value for exposure to other radionuclides. O. I need to know what would happen to our home and our pets (if I couldn't get them all in the car) in case of nuclear accident. I plan to take all of us and all of our animals in the car, but it won't be easy unless we take two cars, which will add to the traffic, but we may have to do it. Could we ever return to our home or would it (and our farm) just be totally worthless? A. It is possible that contamination levels could be so high you would not be able to return home. Homeowner insurance will not cover a loss due to a radiation disaster. You might, however, be required to continue payments on your mortgage. O. If or when there is damage to control room, i.e., brain of a nuclear facility, is there 'not' an automatic reactor shut down? A. Yes. The control rods, which shut down the nuclear reactor by stopping the chain reaction, are designed to be fail-safe. If the control room is disabled, the control rods will be automatically inserted into the reactor within seconds to shut down the chain reaction. Unfortunately, the insertion of the control rods does not terminate heat production. Even after the chain reaction is stopped, the reactor core continues to generate about 7 percent of the heat it produced at full power. For a large reactor like Shearon Harris, that's plenty of heat. If that heat is not removed, the shut down reactor core can overheat and be damaged. Consider Three Mile Island. The reactor was shut down around 4 am. Operators mistakenly turned off the cooling systems. Around 6:15 am, the reactor core overheated to the point where it partially melted down.