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Government

Emergency Drill at Cordova

Exelon

At least on paper, something very frightening will happen Wednesday at the Cordova nuclear plant. The Quad Cities Generating Station will hold its annual emergency preparedness drill, involving emergency agencies in four counties and from both states.

Plant spokesman, Bill Stoermer , says the goal is to test everyone's ability to protect area residents if there's some sort of accident.

"We can use our control room simulator which is an exact duplicate of one-half of the simulator at the plant. And we can program in any type of scenario that can happen at the plant and then the simulator will run that in real time, very similar to an airplane simulator."

 
He estimates about 200 people will participate in the drill - at the Cordova plant, at fire and police departments, and emergency management agencies for Iowa and Illinois. And overseeing it all will be the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Stoermer says all of the people involved Wednesday will meet on Friday for a debriefing session to evaluate the exercise. 

A native of Detroit, Herb Trix began his radio career as a country-western disc jockey in Roswell, New Mexico (“KRSY, your superkicker in the Pecos Valley”), in 1978. After a stint at an oldies station in Topeka, Kansas (imagine getting paid to play “Louie Louie” and “Great Balls of Fire”), he wormed his way into news, first in Topeka, and then in Freeport Illinois.