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Mock disaster puts power plant to test
By ALEX LEARY, Times Staff Writer CRYSTAL RIVER -- The man in the high-backed swivel chair overlooking the control room at Florida Power's training center seemed like an evil puppet master. With click after click of a mouse, he unleashed disaster, starting with a computer virus that crippled monitors that provide operators with vital information about the nuclear reactor. "We basically had them flying blind," the man grinned. Charles Crosten could laugh because it was all a simulation, the start of a two-day exercise to evaluate how Florida Power identifies and mitigates disaster, and how local and state emergency workers protect the public. The intricate scenario, which began Wednesday, took months to design but was kept secret from all but a few. As participants scrambled to react, staff from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency took notes. A written evaluation will not be released for several weeks but an NRC spokesman, Ken Clark, said Florida Power appeared to manage the drill without major incident. Here is how the events played out: At 8:25 a.m., not long after the control room operators encountered the computer problems, an imaginary earthquake rocked the west coast of Florida, causing damage through Citrus and Levy counties, including the collapse of a hotel in Chiefland, which killed four people. The magnitude 6.2 quake damaged key equipment at the nuclear plant, allowing radioactive material to escape from the reactor core. When operators tried to shut down the mock reactor, they discovered that control rods that penetrate the reactor to stop the chain reaction of neutrons within the uranium fuel would not budge. Manual shutdown efforts failed initially but by 9:13 a.m., operators were able to inject a boron solution into the reactor core to absorb the neutrons. A significant aftershock occurred at 10:05 a.m., damaging the ventilation system and allowing radioactive material to escape from the containment building and into the open air. The plume of radioactive material was blown east, though Florida Power officials said the scenario would have posed little threat to public health. A person standing near the plant for a couple of hours would have received the equivalent of one or two dental X-rays, spokesman Mac Harris said. But the emergency was severe enough to warrant the "evacuation" or shelter of about 15,000 people within 10 miles of the plant. Throughout the day, mock news briefings were held at the training center on Venable Street, across from Crystal River Airport. Evaluators will determine how well information was passed to the media and conveyed to the general public. Though mostly a serious affair, at times observers could not help but laugh, such as when a Citrus County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman announced that a truckload of chickens had overturned during the evacuation. Asked why the earthquake scenario was used since they are so rare in Florida, officials said the likelihood of multiple failures would be otherwise unlikely. "You have to come up with something really bizarre to get to the general emergency," said Florida Power instructor Dennis Treadway. It was a point Florida Power and its parent company, Progress Energy, sought to make with the media throughout the day. Officials referred repeatedly to the robust design of the plant, tacitly suggesting that even an incredible event such as a earthquake would result in little damage. With the initial phase of the disaster test over, officials today will focus on more closely identifying the extent of the contamination. State radiological teams will act as though material spread over a 50-mile radius in which crops, water supplies and livestock could be affected.
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