Bill McCollum, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Bill Ostendorff of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, from left, visit the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant early Monday afternoon to discuss reactor and nuclear material safety in the U.S. Watts Bar is currently completing work on a second reactor which is the only new reactor under construction in the country.SPRING CITY, Tenn. – In a building off to the side of Watts Bar Nuclear Plant, TVA’s nuclear operators have been playing “what if” for the last month.
What if a very large earthquake occurred? What if the quake caused a dam break? What if more than one reactor lost cooling power?
On Monday, as reporters waited to hear Sen. Lamar Alexander, R.-Tenn., report on what he and Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Bill Ostendorff saw on a tour of the plant that morning, three operators in a control room simulator responded to a mock earthquake and electric power loss for cooling to the reactor.
Bells and alarms sounded, light flashed, and the trio of operators jumped to action.
Even before an 9.0 earthquake in March dismantled the electrical power system to the six Japanese reactors and a tsunami swept away the fuel for the plant’s back-up diesel generators, U.S. nuclear plant operators drilled for 240 hours a year in this and similar training rooms across the U.S.