Fort Calhoun situation
"When safety regulators arrive for a tour of a nuclear plant, the operators usually give the visitors a helmet, safety glasses and earplugs. When Gregory B. Jaczko, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, got to the Fort Calhoun plant on Monday morning, the Omaha Public Power District offered him a life jacket."
(..)
"The only access route to the plant is over a sinuous path of catwalks built over the submerged parking lot and walkways in recent weeks.
Vital equipment like generators, pumps and controls are dry, according to the power company and to Mr. Jaczko, who spent a couple of hours clambering over walls of sandbags and inspecting waterproof barriers, some of which were added in recent months at the commission’s insistence."
(..)
"Among the more striking scenery at this plant a few miles north of Omaha was the floating carcass of a 2,000-foot-long rubber berm that was supposed to help protect the plant. A plant worker driving a small earth mover called a Bobcat accidentally sideswiped it early Sunday morning, pulling it open like a zipper."
(..)
"At Fort Calhoun, where the river has risen gradually, the water seeps in through sandbag walls, electrical conduits and other places that workers had not thought much about before. There are so many small water pumps running to keep up with the leaks that keeping them supplied with gasoline and diesel requires something akin to a bucket brigade.
Orange plastic fuel cans are rolled on a cart over the catwalks and then handed off to employees who are headed deeper into the plant. Climbing over the sandbags at the entrances, they carry them in, and workers on their way out pick up a few empties and carry them out for refilling."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/us/28nuke.html?_r=2
(..)
"The only access route to the plant is over a sinuous path of catwalks built over the submerged parking lot and walkways in recent weeks.
Vital equipment like generators, pumps and controls are dry, according to the power company and to Mr. Jaczko, who spent a couple of hours clambering over walls of sandbags and inspecting waterproof barriers, some of which were added in recent months at the commission’s insistence."
(..)
"Among the more striking scenery at this plant a few miles north of Omaha was the floating carcass of a 2,000-foot-long rubber berm that was supposed to help protect the plant. A plant worker driving a small earth mover called a Bobcat accidentally sideswiped it early Sunday morning, pulling it open like a zipper."
(..)
"At Fort Calhoun, where the river has risen gradually, the water seeps in through sandbag walls, electrical conduits and other places that workers had not thought much about before. There are so many small water pumps running to keep up with the leaks that keeping them supplied with gasoline and diesel requires something akin to a bucket brigade.
Orange plastic fuel cans are rolled on a cart over the catwalks and then handed off to employees who are headed deeper into the plant. Climbing over the sandbags at the entrances, they carry them in, and workers on their way out pick up a few empties and carry them out for refilling."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/us/28nuke.html?_r=2