Local health officials in a four-county area near the Shearon Harris nuclear power plant will be distributing potassium iodide pills to residents living within 10 miles of the nuclear plant.

Potassium iodide pills, known as KI pills, are an over-the-counter medication that can reduce the risk of thyroid cancer from radioactive exposure. The pills are being distributed free of charge to help prevent health risks during a nuclear accident.

The pills are not to be ingested unless residents are directed to take the pills during an emergency. Officials warn that the KI pills are not an alternative for evacuation during a nuclear accident.

Officials in Wake, Chatham, Harnett and Lee counties will be giving away the pills at local public schools and other locations on May 15. Some will also distribute the pills on May 22.

Local health officials began distributing the pills in 2002 within the nuclear plant's 10-mile Emergency Planning Zone. The cost of the pills is covered by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

About 74,000 people live within 10 miles of the nuclear plant, up from about 15,000 when the plant began operating in 1986.

One of the nation's top nuclear regulators said the country's 64 nuclear plants are virtually impregnable to terrorist attack.

Commissioner Dale Klein of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Friday the public has been confused by misinformation from critics who suggest that nuclear plants are vulnerable. Klein urged against requiring further security measures at nuclear plants.

Klein, the former chairman of the NRC, spoke at the Summit on the National Academy of Engineering in Raleigh. Klein, an engineering professor, also worked for five years at the Pentagon as assistant to the secretary of defense for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense Programs.

The nearest nuclear plant locally is the Shearon Harris facility, located about 25 miles southwest of Raleigh. The plant has one reactor and has been operating since 1986. Progress Energy, the plant's operator, has applied to the NRC for federal licenses to add two reactors to the site.

The Obama Administration announced this morning the first federal loan guarantee for the construction of a nuclear plant.

The $8 billion guarantee will be awarded to Southern Co. to build two reactors in Georgia at the existing nuclear site of the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant.

The loan guarantee places Southern Co. at the forefront of the so-called nuclear renaissance in this country. North Carolina's publicly held power companies -- Progress Energy in Raleigh and Duke Energy in Charlotte -- both have applied for licenses to build new nuclear reactors but are at least several years from being ready to begin construction.

Wake County will soon be the new home of a giant piece of equipment from the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania that experienced the nation's only nuclear accident in 1979.

An electric generator from the plant, in storage for the past 30 years, will be installed this fall at Progress Energy's Shearon Harris nuclear plant, about 25 miles southwest of Raleigh.

Raleigh-based Progress will use the 670-ton machine to boost the power capacity of the Shearon Harris nuclear plant, which has been operating here since 1986.

Nuclear safety regulators said today that Progress Energy's Shearon Harris nuclear plant in Wake County leaked about 1,000 gallons of water contaminated with tritium, a low-level source of radiation.
The leak, which affected about 100 cubic feet of soil, did not affect public safety, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The contaminated soil will be dried onsite to evaporate the tritium.
The Shearon Harris leak was discovered Sunday at 8:30 a.m. by a plant operator during regular inspection rounds. A pipe sprung a leak about 15 feet from the nuclear plant's water treatment building, and about 2 miles within the plant boundary.

It took just seven particles of metal -- each the size of a speck of ground pepper -- to shut down Progress Energy's Brunswick nuclear power plant near Wilmington.

In a special inspection report describing the incident, federal nuclear regulators said Tuesday the malfunction that shut down the Brunswick plant near had a very low safety significance.

Progress Energy, the Raleigh-based power company that operates the nuclear plant, shut it down for a week and a half in September after one of the emergency backup diesel generators wouldn't start during a test.

Progress Energy's Shearon Harris nuclear plant in southwest Wake County has resumed operations after fixing a major oil leak that idled the plant for about five days.

The plant was restarted Friday at 9:15 a.m. and began producing power at 8:20 that evening, said Mike Hughes, a spokesman for the Raleigh-based utility.

The plant was shut down Nov. 15 following an oil leak that saw 7,000 gallons gush out of the main generator's oil seal system at the plant, draining half of the system's pressurized lubricant.

The officially dubbed "oil leak" that shut down the Shearon Harris nuclear plant over the weekend was no mere trickle but a geyser that drenched surrounding equipment and coagulated into a pool on the floor.

About 7,000 gallons gushed out of the plant's main generator's oil seal system, draining half of the system's pressurized lubricant, according to Progress Energy, the company that owns the power plant.

The accident serves as a reminder of the sheer industrial scale of a nuclear power complex that generates 900 megawatts of power and employs 600 people. Within five minutes of the mishap, Shearon Harris operators shut down the nuclear reactor at 10:42 p.m. Sunday night and embarked an industrial cleanup that has continued until this afternoon.

Several dozen workers are cleaning up the spill at the nuclear plant located about 25 miles southwest of Raleigh.

Progress Energy idled its Shearon Harris nuclear plant in southwest Wake County on Sunday night after plant operators discovered an oil leak.

The leak was discovered at 10:42 p.m. as maintenance workers were changing an oil filter on a platform used to lubricate the main generator. The leak arose from a faulty handle on the filter, Hughes said.

"This is a non-nuclear issue," said Mike Hughes, a spokesman for the Raleigh-based utility. "It's a mechanical issue. "Hughes said he couldn't project when the plant will resume operating.

N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, a Durham-based anti-nuke group, is pushing ahead in its longshot effort to block Progress Energy's application for a federal license to build two new nuclear reactors at the Shearon Harris site in Wake County.

N.C. WARN, as the watchdog group is called, today asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to keep alive its case opposing the licensing application. N.C. WARN's case was tossed last month by the NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, and the group wants the NRC to reconsider.

If the NRC agrees with the licensing board, N.C. WARN will likely appeal to a federal court, said N.C. WARN director Jim Warren.

N.C. WARN has filed 11 objections to the license application by Raleigh-based Progress. The group says that the design of the nuclear reactor is still being modified, that Progress low-balled the cost of the project,  that the existing reactor at the site violates fire safety standards, that the site is vulnerable to terrorist air attack, and that local authorities lack an adequate emergency evacuation plan for the highly populated area in Southwestern Wake County, among other allegations.