More than two hundred public safety officials from federal, state and local agencies will continue mock exercises this week to train emergency responders for a potential accident at the Shearon Harris nuclear plant in Wake County.

The training will take place within six emergency operations centers operated by the state, by four counties and at the Harris nuclear plant. The counties involved are Wake, Chatham, Harnett and Lee.

The exercises take place on Tuesday and Wednesday and will train participants in dealing with hypothetical accidental scenarios at the nuclear plant.

This week's indoor training follows outdoor exercises conducted last week, in which officials trained in emergency traffic control and clearing people from lakes and waterways, as well as setting up reception centers and decontamination centers.

Progress Energy has notified federal regulators that a Shearon Harris nuclear plant contractor was hospitalized for a medical emergency and as a precaution was presumed to be contaminated by radioactivity.

The contractor was taken by ambulance and accompanied to Rex Hospital by the plant's radiation protection personnel because there was no time to time to survey the worker for radioactive contamination.

When the contractor was in the hospital, she and the ambulance that transported her were surveyed and found to contain no radioactive contamination. Her scrubs and belongings were brought back to the Shearon Harris plant for monitoring and were found to be clean, said Progress spokesman Mike Hughes.

"This is not unusual if a person working in a radiation controlled area suffers a heart attack or has some other emergency condition that requires immediate transport," said NRC spokesman Roger Hannah. "If, due to the emergency, a person is unable to do that, they are considered 'potentially contaminated.'"
 

Residents and visitors within 10 miles of the Shearon Harris nuclear plant will be treated tomorrow to a full blast of the plant's emergency sirens.

Progress Energy will conduct an annual full-volume test of all 83 sirens between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. The annual test will sound very much like a real emergency, except that the sirens will wail only 3 minutes at a time.

All U.S. nuclear plants are required to have emergency warning systems within a 10-mile emergency planning zone. Shearon Harris conducts four tests a year for about 5 seconds and one test for 3 minutes.

The sirens used by Raleigh-based Progress Energy, which operates the plant, sound like air raid warnings. At 100 feet, they generate 127 decibels, comparable to a human scream or a marching band.

Here's the news release from the White House on the emergency declaration for North Carolina:

In a periodic ritual familiar to residents who live near a nuclear power plant, Progress Energy will sound the emergency warning sirens for the Shearon Harris plant at full blast tomorrow morning.

The Raleigh-based power company will conduct a full-volume test for about 5 seconds between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. The Shearon Harris nuclear plant has 83 warning sirens within 10 miles of the power plant.

The nuclear siren, which resembles an air-raid warning, is not likely to be mistaken for the afternoon bell at the local schoolhouse.

Progress is required to have a notification system in place in the event of an accident that results in a radioactive release. In past years, the sirens have failed the test, but since then the utility has replaced them at a cost of $2.5 million.

Less than two weeks after hundreds of utility workers streamed to this area to help with tornado recovery efforts, hundreds from this region are now returning the favor in storm-stricken Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee.

In all, Progress Energy and Duke Energy have sent more than 1,000 utility workers to help with power restoration efforts in the wake of monster storms that killed about 300 people in the South. Those workers have been sent from both utilities' service areas in Carolinas as well as Florida, Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.

Additionally, rural cooperatives and municipal power agencies in this state have sent more than 150 linemen and technicians to provide emergency assistance.

Some could remain more than a week as they work long days and live out of hotels or emergency staging areas. In exchange for putting up with hardship conditions, long days and sore muscles, the workers are paid overtime pay from the get-go, without having to log 40 hours before qualifying for their 150 percent overtime rate.

Fear not, Dookies: That blaring siren you may hear this month is only a test.

Duke this summer is joining a number of universities installing outdoor alarm and alert systems to use in case of campus emergency - a response to last year's massacre at Virginia Tech. 

The university has been installing the systems in recent months and will be testing them in July. Aaron Graves, Duke's security chief, told me this week the specific times of the tests aren't yet known, but will be done throughout the month.