CORDOVA, IL—
As we watch the Fukushima nuclear disaster overseas, all eyes are on our nuclear facilities here in the U.S.Tuesday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave concerned residents an assessment of the Cordova plant.
The purpose of the town hall was to give people an idea of what happens at nuclear power facilities and what kind of oversight is involved.
They did that by providing brochures and graphical displays.
A lot of people showed up, they say, because of what happened in Japan.
"Just hope and pray they make it safe," said Mary McCarthy, who lives near the plant.
According to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Exelon Nuclear plant in Cordova is safe.
"I think people should feel safe because the plant is operating safely and as a regulator, their safety is our number one priority.
It's our mission," said Viktoria Mitlyng, Sr. Public Affairs Officer with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Part of making it safe, according to Mitlyng, is having a system of redundancy in place.
"If one system fails, you have another one," she said. "There are multiple levels of protection, so you don't get to the kind of accident you have in Japan."
The NRC thinks it's highly unlikely, something like Japan's accident, will happen here.
"It's just not really feasible geographically around the QC."
There's actually only been one level 5 nuclear accident in this country- Three Mile Island.
It happened in Pennsylvania in 1979.
Exelon now operates one of two reactors there.
The company didn't operate the reactor at the time of the accident, but has taken away invaluable lessons from that disaster.
"A lot of the modifications today are a result of lessons learned at Three Mile Island," said Bill Stoermer, Communications Manager with Exelon.
