It served notice.
What took place at PPL's Susquehanna nuclear power plant near Berwick shook a few people up on Tuesday.
It also served notice that nuclear disasters are possible — or at least the threat of them.
Nuclear power plants aren’t on our radar that much these days. We don’t often think about Three Mile Island or the movie “The China Syndrome.”
For the most part, we have grown to believe that the production of nuclear power plant energy is almost as safe as flying the friendly skies each day. There are no incidents and everything goes off without a hitch.
Until Tuesday.
PPL Corporation put out a notice that officials were taking actions at its Susquehanna nuclear power plant, located about seven miles north of Berwick, to stop a Freon vapor leak from a chiller system in the Unit 1 reactor building.
They issued an “alert” — the second lowest of the four emergency classifications established by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for nuclear power plants. PPL said the alert came out because Freon — a refrigerant used for cooling — was leaking in an area containing plant safety systems.
The affected chiller system provides cooling for the Unit 1 reactor building. The reactor building has a redundant system to provide cooling. Unit 1 continued to operate at full power.
By Wednesday morning, PPL issued another notice stating that the Freon vapor leak was contained.
The company stated that “public safety was never at risk during the incident.” Officials said employees remained safe and that no injuries were reported.
We forget that nuclear reactors are all around us.
There are actually five operating nuclear power plants in Pennsylvania: The one in Susquehanna, Beaver Valley, Limerick, Peach Bottom and Three Mile Island. Those five are among 100 operating nuclear power plants in the country.
The one in Susquehanna, though, is a little closer to home: It’s one hour and 20 minutes from Honesdale to Berwick. It’s that close.
For others, these reactors are even closer to home.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency reports that nearly 3 million Americans live within 10 miles of an operating nuclear power plant.
Although the Nuclear Regulatory Commission monitors these facilities closely, accidents are always possible. Dangerous levels of radiation could come our way.
If that were the case, authorities would activate warning sirens or another approved alert method and instruct citizens through the Emergency Alert System (EAS) on local television and radio stations on protection methods.
Tuesday’s incident at the Susquehanna plant raised some concerns. It also reminded us that there’s always a threat of a nuclear disaster.
We got lucky with this latest incident. Let’s hope that we won’t see another incident for years to come.
We want energy resources that are safe and sound. We don’t want to test those safety measures.
