Engineers are engineers. Don't count on US engineers being better than Japanese engineers!!

Change the assumptions around just a bit underneath the surface ... and volia, an engineer can justify doing just about anything.

Of note with regards to both the Cooper and Fort Calhoun nuclear power plants and their current flooding issues:

The Gavins Point Dam was designed to release up to 584,000 cf/s and is currently releasing ONLY abou 1/4 of that amount, ie: 150,000 cf/s (and that release rate slug won't hit the power plants for another 3 to 4 days or so). IF the power plants have problems NOW ... how would they fare under a full dam release situation?

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[link to nathanvjohnson.wordpress.com]

QUESTION: How much water can be released at Gavins Point Dam?

ANSWER: If the spillway gates were opened to capacity at the (Gavins Point) dam, the release would be 584,000 cubic feet per second (cfs).

Gavins Point Operations Project Manager Dave Becker puts that in perspective: “If you’re watching the Yankton Bucks, 584,000 cfs would put 13.4 feet of water on a football field every second.”

There is a good reason the dam was built for that capacity, he said.

“During the flood of 1952, Yankton had a flow of 480,000 cfs,” Becker stated. “We need to have the capability to release very high flows in the event of an extreme flood.”