Tornado just missed nuclear
plant
Storm passed two miles northeast of Calvert Cliffs,
officials estimate
By Johnathon E. Briggs
Sun Staff
Originally published
May 1, 2002
Packing winds of more than 261 miles per hour, the
strongest tornado in Maryland's history passed within an estimated
two miles of the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in Calvert
County on Sunday.
Plant officials said yesterday that
although the state had never before experienced a twister of such
magnitude, the nuclear facility, perched on a slope overlooking the
Chesapeake Bay, could have withstood the violent storm.
"The plant is designed to
withstand tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, a wide range of
events," spokesman Karl Neddenien said of the power plant owned and
operated by Constellation Energy Group, parent company of Baltimore
Gas and Electric Co.
Photographs taken Sunday evening,
apparently by a plant employee from an area on the grounds that
looks toward the bay, have circulated in recent days showing the
spinning funnel cloud touching down in the water as it moved east
toward Dorchester County.
The category F5 tornado - highest
on a scale used by meteorologists - appears to be about two miles
northeast of the 28-year-old plant, officials said.
But
critics were asking: Are Calvert Cliffs structures rated to
withstand an F5 tornado?
"I've seen pictures of a stalk of
straw thrown through a telephone pole by a tornado. It's certainly
not a ho-hum kind of affair," said Paul Gunter, director of the
Reactor Watchdog Project with the Nuclear Information and Resource
Service in Washington.
"Clearly the concern is the power
system to the plant, whether or not the buildings the emergency
generators are housed in are rated to take winds of up to 260 miles
per hour or tornado
missiles."
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