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Tour of the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant
HUTCHINSON ISLAND, Fla. -- Emission-free power, with plenty of risk. We all learned the dangers of nuclear power from Fukushima in Japan and decades ago on Three Mile island. CBS 12 gets a rare look at safety upgrades underway at the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant.
CLICK HERE to watch Jana Escbach's story
The lifeline of the plant was supposed to be 40 years, in order to extend that, they had to make several upgrades, including safety measures.
Nuclear reactor Unit 1 at the St. Lucie Power Plant. Now fully-upgraded after a month-long outage to increase power output and re-evaluate plant safety measures.
Jack Hoffman: The electrical generating part of the plant, we needed to put in a larger electric generator, larger steam turbines, larger transformers, larger pumps.
In an up-close look at the nuclear reactors FPL's Jack Hoffman shows us the millions of dollars in upgrades to the plant, much of it hardened in case of an emergency. More than 5,000 hours of training and safety checks have been performed since March of last year.
A dark day in nuclear power. March 11, 2011, a massive wave hit Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant. Days later after a series of equipment failures, a nuclear meltdown began. Since then Germany suspended nuclear operations and Japan just went back on the grid with nuclear power this month.
At the St. Lucie plant, regulators began to scrutinize lessons learned from Fukushima. The storage tanks for fuel roads was elevated and hardened to 62 feet. New generators put in and every emergency plan put into action just in case.
Jack Hoffman: The regulations are very stringent and we have to pass a number of tests with the federal government.
120-plus engineers certified the plant as weather safe, hardened enough to crash a plane into. Out of one country's meltdown, comes hard lessons learned.
New generators and fire safety equipment, all ready for hurricane season here. In addition to the new generators to be used in case of an emergency the plant has batteries and diesel generators on site protected by steel-reinforced concrete buildings. Regulators have certified the plant safe from fires, earthquakes, and hurricanes.
Friday, June 29 2012, 06:11 PM EDT
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