Where the reactors are - U.S., Midwest
About the Prairie Island reactors
How a pressurized water nuclear reactor works - part I
How a pressurized water nuclear reactor works - part II
Northern States Power sues Westinghouse over faulty tubes
Problems with Steam Generator Tubes (Part I)
Problems with Steam Generator Tubes (Part II)
A nightmare confirmed: steam tube degradation is increasingly likely to cause a nuclear meltdown (Part I)
A nightmare confirmed: steam tube degradation is increasingly likely to cause a nuclear meltdown (Part II)
Chernobyl to Prairie Island - We are all in the zone (Part I)
Chernobyl to Prairie Island - We are all in the zone (Part II)
Prairie Island routinely emits radioactivity into the environment
A little lesson on radioactivity: how it affects the human body
The difference between high-level and low-level radiation exposure
The effects of low-level radiation exposure
The waste fuel pools are filling up
Dry cask storage: problems guaranteed, and problems unknown
Yucca Mountain, Nevada: not a good place for nuclear waste
Transporting the waste: how safe can 45,000 shipments be?
Most mining and milling of uranium occurs on Indian lands
People of color are also targeted for other uranium processing facilities
Nuclear waste dumps - guess where they want to put them
Anything is cheap if you don't pay the cost
Nuclear power can be phased out
An interview with two of the neighbors
REFERENCES
Broken Reactor Components
Chernobyl to Prairie Island - We Are All in the Zone
Part II - Prairie Island
A Chernobyl type explosion can not happen at Prairie Island. But a cascading tube rupture could not have happened at Chernobyl. The technologies are different. Each nuclear technology, however, is susceptible to catastrophic accidents.
Cascading tube ruptures at Prairie Island could contaminate an area similar to the size of the contaminated zone surrounding Chernobyl. Here, the area contaminated by this one type of radiation from Chernobyl is overlaid on a map centered on Prairie Island. These maps are on the same scale. A cascading tube rupture event at Prairie Island could contaminate an area this size.
Evacuation and abandonment will be the only emergency response, and we are ill-equipped for even a safe evacuation.
We are all in the zone.