Hurricane season, earthquake remind Crystal River of nuclear risks
CRYSTAL RIVER –
Every Friday at noon, the test sirens for the Crystal River 3 nuclear reactor reach into in this city’s mom-and-pop diners and backwater manatee havens.
But if their monotone drone ever seemed eerie or foreboding, that stopped. Locals now joke about it: You know it’s time to eat when the nuke plant rings loud and true.
Still, even in this tiny city defined by nuclear power, some can’t help but wonder about the shocking earthquake and tsunami in Japan. And the radiation crisis they wrought.
No one envisions a tsunami that brings 30-foot waves ashore, it’s true. But the dawning of hurricane season at least raises worry that storm surge could flood Crystal River 3, which sits a mile from the Gulf of Mexico.
As unlikely as that is, far more people would be impacted by an accident today than even 10 years ago because of population growth. About 35,000 people live within 10 miles of the plant, the area of greatest concern for radiation exposure. And, some 1.1 million live within 50 miles, an area that could see water and food supplies and livestock contaminated.
Plant owner Progress Energy says Crystal River 3’s 42-inch walls and its position 30.5 feet above sea level protect it against even the fiercest storms.
To be sure, many people here don’t think about the nuke plant at all. But perhaps for the first time in a long time, some seeds of doubt have been sowed.
“It’s (the nuclear plant) never been a concern, but since Japan, I think people are taking a second look at what’s happened,” said Gary Bartell, a former Citrus County commissioner.
The Atlantic hurricane season starts Tuesday, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts an above-normal hurricane season. The Atlantic could see six to 10 hurricanes, with as many as six developing into major storms of Category 3 or greater.
The risk concerning Florida’s three nuclear plants is that storm surge might overtake the nuclear plants’ backup generators, knocking them out of commission and preventing them from pumping in water to cool the radioactive fuel.
That’s essentially what happened in Japan, where waves estimated at 26 to 46 feet, knocked out the backup generators at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.
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Some residents here admit to new anxieties about nuclear power since the Japanese disaster. People like Gerry McKenna.
She and her husband, Patrick, lived through the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Harrisburg, Pa., 32 years ago.
The McKennas draped sheets around their doors and windows to keep out any radiation. Getting her children to and from school meant braving the unknown on the outside.
“I lived with my suitcases packed for days,” she said. “The most frustrating thing was watching the news and trying to figure out whether to leave or not.”
The McKennas relocated to Crystal River five years ago to be closer to Patrick’s family in Inverness. She confesses she didn’t know she was moving near another nuclear plant.
“We moved here and one day we were driving down Dunnellon Road, and you could see the (cooling) towers,” she said. “I said, ‘Oh my gosh, we live near another nuclear plant!'”
McKenna is content living so close to Crystal River 3, but would be more worried if Progress Energy goes through with its plan to build two more reactors just across the border in Levy County.
She also worries for her grandson, who’s a Marine stationed in Okinawa, Japan.
The McKennas aren’t the only people who moved here unaware of their atomic neighbors. Dan and Alice Hurley moved to Homosassa, a little south of Crystal River, eight years ago and discovered the nuclear plant when flipping through a phone book.
Not that it ever has bothered them.
“We’re retired. We don’t worry about anything,” Alice said.
In fact, several people interviewed appear indifferent to nuclear energy, often former nuclear plant workers themselves or seniors who moved here for its quiet lifestyle.
Nearly 40 percent of Citrus County residents are 60 or older, almost double the rate for Florida overall.
All told, about 35,000 people live within the 10-mile emergency planning zone surrounding Crystal River 3, or about 11 percent more than lived there in 2000, according to Tribune research. That’s far fewer than the 224,000 who live within 10 miles of the Turkey Point nuclear facility in Miami-Dade County.
But as many as 1.1 million could be affected by an accident in Crystal River if you look at the broader 50-mile area around the plant, where food and water supplies could be impacted. This 50-mile region grew by 27 percent since 2000 and its population reaches into north and west Pasco County.
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People here in Citrus County learned long ago what it means to live near a nuclear plant.
Crystal River 3 has the most “gorgeous” lights at night, says a waitress at Mama Sally’s diner on U.S. 19, where the fried haddock fingers are to die for.
The county health department has a stash of potassium iodide pills, which can help keep the thyroid from absorbing some radiation.
And, of course, there are the sirens. Sometimes, they’re accompanied by a voice over the loudspeaker, said Daryl Seaton, who owns a Best Western hotel on Crystal River’s main drag.
“We used to joke, what they’re really saying is, ‘If this thing goes up, kiss your … goodbye,” said Seaton, who appreciates when Progress Energy’s workers and contractors fill his hotel.
Progress Energy helped put Crystal River, population 3,500, and Citrus County on the map. The company employs around 1,000 people here and accounts for nearly 20 percent of the county’s tax revenues, said John Siefert, head of an economic development agency here.
Locals got so comfortable with nuclear energy that two years ago the Citrus County Commission eliminated a decades-old prohibition on housing in the nuclear plant’s shadow.
As long ago as the mid-1980s, county leaders created a 5-mile ring around Crystal River 3. It allowed for only very low density development, such as a nearby limestone mine.
That changed in January 2009, when an influential landowner named Dixie Hollins convinced the County Commission to lift the 5-mile radius so he could build a marina, industrial buildings and condos for energy plant workers. His project is on hold for now.
Hollins’ grandfather is the namesake of Dixie Hollins High School in St. Petersburg.
Today, some business interests are happy the 5-mile radius is gone. Some environmentalists and civic activists are appalled.
After the Fukushima meltdown, government watchdog Theodora “Teddy” Rusnak thought, “Holy …, it’s too bad we took the five-mile radius out of the (land-use) code. I think the radius was a good idea. Who wouldn’t want to have a radius around a nuclear plant, unless you had an ulterior motive?”
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In the wake of Fukushima, Progress Energy has met more frequently with community groups and the media.
The company has taken a black eye over problems with the 42-inch-thick concrete walls that enclose its nuclear reactor. The company discovered separation – the company says it’s different from cracking – in those walls that forced it to turn off the nuclear plant in September 2009.
It’s been offline ever since, and the company has relied on the four coal power plants that make up the rest of the Crystal River energy complex.
Still, Jon Franke, a vice president of Progress Energy, says the separation in the concrete doesn’t affect Crystal River 3’s ability to withstand a storm.
The nuclear plant is a mile from the Gulf and 30.5 feet above mean sea level. Technically, storm surge might be able to reach that height.
Storm models provided by Citrus County suggest water could reach about 32 feet at the plant site in a perfect hurricane, and state data provided by Progress Energy suggest a Category 5 hurricane could create a 35.7-foot surge in the county.
However, the nuclear plant has watertight doors that add another 10 feet of protection, making it resistant up to 40.5 feet. The plant also has three diesel-powered generators inside of buildings that can cool the reactor and the spent nuclear fuel pools, a company spokeswoman said.
“They (public) should not be concerned at all,” Franke said. “We’ve looked at the condition of the building and it’s safe from all natural disaster.”
A subdivision a few miles from the Crystal River 3 nuclear plant called Crystal Manor is sparsely populated with hardy retirees who don’t seem to worry much about nuclear meltdowns.
Joseph Gumus, 63, is one of them. A wiry man with a bushy mustache, Gumus had spent most of a recent Wednesday fishing for mackerel and kingfish. Pyramids of old scallop and oyster shells from fishing adventures past were piled up on the edge of his lot.
“I don’t worry about that,” he said of a nuclear accident. “Life’s too short to worry about things.
“If something happens, you’ve got the sirens.”
Tribune reporter Kevin Wiatrowski contributed to this report.
