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By Tina Gerhardt, AlterNet
Posted on June 30, 2011, Printed on June 30, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151470/nukes_at_risk_as_floods_and_fires_from_extreme_weather_make_us_vulnerable
Numerous nuclear power plants face precarious scenarios as a result of climate change-induced extreme weather. Flooding of the Missouri river is being monitored around the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant in Nebraska. And wildfires have reached the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which houses nuclear-contaminated waste, in New Mexico.
March's disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan has raised broader concerns about the safety of nuclear power plants in the U.S. Most nuclear power plants are located near water, which they draw on for cooling. But with the extreme weather this spring, the Mississippi, Missouri and Platte rivers in the Midwest have flooded, in some cases to their highest levels in over 100 years.