Alabama Nuclear Plant Cites Superior Safety

A U.S. nuclear plant in Alabama similar in design to the earthquake-hit Fukushima facility in Japan has multiple defenses to prevent and tackle the same kind of emergency, its operator said.

Safety features at the Browns Ferry plant in Alabama are so superior to those at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant that even in the event of massive flooding the chances of a crisis are negligible, officials from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) told reporters.

“What we have here is defense in depth, multiple levels of redundancy, backup to the backup to the backup,” TVA consultant Jim Nesbitt said.

Comparisons between Fukushima and Browns Ferry are relevant because both have Mark 1 boiling water reactors made by General Electric. There are 23 such reactors in the U.S. Some engineers deem these reactors more vulnerable than newer pressurized reactors to dangerous overheating in the event of power loss.

Critics point to objections raised by U.S. nuclear engineers in the 1970s and 1980s about possible design vulnerabilities in boiling water reactors and they say what happened at Fukushima merely validates those concerns.

Officials at Browns Ferry, which first came online in 1974, stressed two crucial differences between Fukushima and Browns Ferry: the U.S. facility’s key power sources were shielded against even a once-in-a-million year flood on the nearby Tennessee River. Second, multiple backup systems would continue to provide power and thus control, even in the event of a flood.

“A big difference … is that when you have got all of your power systems we are able to cool much more quickly,” said Preston Swafford, chief nuclear officer at TVA.