Charlotte Area Reacts to Japan: Sends Rescuers, Scrutinizes Local Nuclear Sites

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by Fox Charlotte

Story Created: Mar 13, 2011 at 11:18 PM EDT

Story Updated: Mar 13, 2011 at 11:19 PM EDT

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Ken Isaacs is one of five people from Samaritan's Purse heading to Japan.  Their goal: save lives and reduce suffering.  The emotional toll is steep. Isaacs hopes this trip will be shorter than past missions.  He gets choked up when telling reporters, "My 40th anniversary is, ah, on April 16th and I wanna be home."

Samaritan's Purse will work with the Billy Graham Association to provide the bare necessities.  More than 2,500 care centers have already sprung up.  Isaacs says, "So we can't help all 2,500, but we'll help some and we'll go right up into the effected areas to do that."

Thousands of people who live near a nuclear power plant in Fukushima have been ordered to evacuate after three reactors lost their cooling functions.  Those reactors are General Electric Mark 1 designs, which have been criticized for decades as being "susceptible to explosion and containment failure," according to the Nuclear Information and Resource Service.       

There are 23 "Mark 1" design nuclear sites in the US, including two in Southport, North Carolina.  In the Carolinas, there are 9 nuclear power plants.  One is closed.  The closest to the Charlotte area is the McGuire Nuclear Station in Huntersville and the Catawba Nuclear Station in York County.

Both are owned and or operated by Duke Energy, which tells us that their plants are "designed to withstand earthquake induced ground motions.  Duke energy's...nuclear plants in the Carolinas are pressurized water reactors. This is a different design than the Mark 1 boiling water reactor."

"There are safer methods to produce electricity," says Louis Zeller.  He is the Science Director for the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League. The organization is dedicated to earth stewardship and public health protection.  Zeller says the McGuire and Catawba plants are even less protected from a meltdown than the one in Fukushima because they use a thinner containment material - ice.  Zeller says, "They use baskets of ice within the reactor which are kept chilled to reduce the kinds of pressure and temperature which will explode such buildings."
 
Zeller says the ice is problematic because of it's ability to withstand events like earthquakes.  A Duke Energy rep says ice condensers meet all safety requirements.
 

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