| The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s
Region IV office in Arlington, Texas has implemented its hurricane response
procedure for monitoring of Hurricane Lili at the Waterford and River Bend commercial
nuclear power plants near New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the South
Texas Project plant near Bay City, Texas.
The office will activate its Incident Response Center at 4:00 p.m. (CDT)
today. NRC inspectors from the Region IV office are currently at each of the
three plant sites reviewing preparations for the impending severe weather.
NRC regional administrator Ellis Merschoff said the agency will dispatch an
NRC liaison to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Region 6 office
in Denton, Texas, on Thursday morning and will maintain frequent communications
with the states of Louisiana and Texas as needed.
Merschoff said that, while none of the plant sites are currently projected
to be directly in the path of hurricane force winds, there is an increased
concern for the possibility of damage from tornados, wind damage to facilities
offsite, and flooding of evacuation routes.
Lili is expected to make landfall in central Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane
sometime Thursday afternoon.
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