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RALEIGH -- Toward the end of Imagine Dragons' Wednesday night show at downtown Raleigh's Red Hat Amphitheater, lead singer Dan Reynolds paused to tell the crowd about how he'd grown up going to shows like this. It was an escape, he said, and a chance to dream.

Apparently, what Reynolds was dreaming about was someday becoming a drum major. Here he is now at age 25, frontman for one of the biggest rock bands in the world -- and on just about every song Wednesday night, he'd grab a stick or two and bash away on drums arrayed at the front of the stage. Even a broken right hand didn't stop him, although maybe it should have because his drum-work generally was not in the pocket; "Hear Me," in particular, was a real mess on the outro.

Extra percussion isn't inherently unusual nowadays (both of Wednesday night's opening acts also had their frontmen playing some drums), but Imagine Dragons still take it to a whole other level. Their extra front-of-stage drums were oversized, five and six feet across, and they were one of the few bands I've ever seen where the drum solo was a communal group effort. They even had an extra drum up in the rafters, which Reynolds accessed via wires that flew him up to bang away during the hit "Radioactive."

It was actually something of a feat to make Wednesday night's show happen at all. A band of strong storms moving through the area forced a 90-minute weather delay, which necessitated moving back the regular curfew to 11 p.m. But the headliners managed to get in a full set.

"Thank you for braving the elements with us tonight, you guys are awesome," Reynolds told the crowd as the band finally took the stage.

While Imagine Dragons come from Las Vegas, they certainly don't sound at all like the image that city conjures up. Their sonic blueprint roughly falls into arena rock along the lines of Coldplay, with the added element of electronic burble -- plus those drums, lots and lots of drums. Long on dramatic crescendos, textured guitar and anguished vocal mannerisms, it's music made for screaming along with, which the young-ish crowd was only too happy to do.

If there's a flaw to Imagine Dragons, it's that they don't transcend their reference points. "Demons" sounds more like Coldplay than Coldplay does, and the ambient beginning to "Rocks" brought Fleet Foxes to mind.

Still, as the show demonstrated, there's always a place for declarative arena rock that makes you raise your fist and yell. Imagine Dragons fill that bill nicely.

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.'"
 

N.C. State University officials say they have patched up a leak that shut down the campus nuclear reactor nearly three weeks ago.

The small research reactor had been leaking about 10 gallons of water an hour from a 15,600-gallon pool used to cool the superheated reactor core and radioactive fuel rods. Total leakage came to about 3,500 gallons.

The leaking water was tainted with radioactivity but posed no public health risk, university officials said. The water was presumed to flow through the Burlington Nuclear Engineering Laboratory on campus and into the ground below.

North Carolina, which relies on nuclear power for nearly half its electricity, is home to some of the nation's highest concentrations of radioactive waste taken from nuclear plants and kept in pools to prevent overheating.

This state's accumulated nuclear waste ranks fourth in the nation by volume, according to a report issued today by the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-leaning advocacy group in Washington, D.C.

The waste has been stored for decades at Progress Energy's Shearon Harris nuclear plant in southwestern Wake County, Brunswick plant near Wilmington and Duke Energy's McGuire plant near Charlotte.

Shearon Harris, less than 25 miles from Raleigh, stores overflow waste from the company's Brunswick plant and H.B. Robinson plant in South Carolina. The Harris plant ranks 22nd nationwide for total nuclear waste.

The first air samples collected by state authorities show that radiation wafting from Japan is at barely detectible levels and poses no threat to public safety in North Carolina.

Officials at the Radiation Protection Section expected infinitesimal increases in background radiation after Progress Energy and Duke Energy reported slight increases last week during routine monitoring at their nuclear plants in the Carolinas and in Florida.

State officials said today that initial air sampling confirms their expectations. The Radiation Protection Section, within the N.C. Department of Environmental and Natural Resources, analyzed four air samples taken Sunday and Tuesday.

The radioactive fallout is the result of malfunctioning Japanese reactors that were damaged by a tsunami earlier this month. The Japanese plants have lost emergency cooling equipment, resulting in melted nuclear fuel and radioactive releases from several reactors and spent fuel pools.

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.