The Indian Point nuclear power plant can't seem to get their emergency sirens working. How will the little school kiddies know when to hide under the desk?
For the third time in less than a month, the four-county emergency siren system at the Indian Point nuclear plants did not work properly yesterday, the result of telephone line problems that were still not fixed by late in the day, Westchester and Rockland county officials said.The good news is that plant officials say they could activate the alarm system from the plant.
Rockland's deputy commissioner for emergency services Dan Greeley said the problem appeared to be with a Verizon telephone line, a relay point that connects the four counties and the siren network with Indian Point via computers.It's advertising like this that Verizon just can't buy anywhere.
Verizon workers still were trying to rectify the problem last night, county and Entergy officials said, though the cause had not been determined.
Jim Steets, a spokesman for Entergy Nuclear Northeast, the plants' owner, said the sirens could have been activated from Indian Point, so the system still would have functioned in the event of an emergency. He said Entergy employees would be the first to know if something happened at the plant and would automatically activate the sirens.First to know? Ya think? "Hey Homer, is the core supposed to be burning like that?"
Matt Groening told the story once on C-SPAN about he and the other writers from The Simpsons were invited to tour a nuclear power plant because the nuclear industry wanted to dispell some of the myths about nuclear plant safety being made fun of on the show. Groening said he and his writers walked out of there with more stories than they could believe.
I'm a believer in nuclear power. Really. However, in my former life as a product support specialist for hydraulic magnetic circuit breakers, I heard some things that made me want to dig a bunker in my backyard.
But hey! If you want to give running a nuclear power plant a try, just click here.
