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The Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant is an electricity-generating facility located in Red Wing, Minnesota along the Mississippi River, adjacent to the Prairie Island Indian Community reservation. The nuclear power plant, which began operating in 1973, has two nuclear reactors (pressurized water reactors) manufactured by Westinghouse that produce a total 1,076 megawatts of power. Units 1 and 2 are licensed to operate through 2033 and 2034, respectively. The plant is owned by Northern States Power Company (NSP), a subsidiary of Xcel Energy, and is operated by Xcel Energy. Prairie Island is one of two nuclear power plants in Minnesota (the other being Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant in Monticello, MN) and has proven to be the more controversial due to the storage of nuclear waste in large steel casks on-site, an area which is a floodplain of the Mississippi. In April 2008, Xcel requested that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) renew the licenses of both reactors, extending them for an additional twenty years. The license renewals were approved in June 2011.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url= http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal/applications/prairie-island.html )〕 The company has also requested the use of a similar storage system at its Monticello plant, which is currently licensed through 2030. In May 2006 repair workers at the plant were exposed to very low levels of radiation due to inhalation of radioactive iodine-131 (131I) gas. The gas leaked from the steam generators, which were opened for inspection. 131I gas is normally removed by means of a carbon-based filter; in this case the filter had developed a small leak. The NRC deemed this event to be of very low safety significance and notes that it did not result in any overdose.〔(4Q/2007 Inspection Findings - Prairie Island 2 )〕 ==Surrounding population== The Nuclear Regulatory Commission defines two emergency planning zones around nuclear power plants: a plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of , concerned primarily with exposure to, and inhalation of, airborne radioactive contamination, and an ingestion pathway zone of about , concerned primarily with ingestion of food and liquid contaminated by radioactivity.〔http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/emerg-plan-prep-nuc-power-bg.html〕 The 2010 U.S. population within of Prairie Island was 27,996, an increase of 4.6 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within was 2,945,237, an increase of 7.8 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include Minneapolis (39 miles to city center) and St. Paul (32 miles to city center).〔Bill Dedman, Nuclear neighbors: Population rises near US reactors, ''msnbc.com'', April 14, 2011 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42555888/ns/us_news-life/ Accessed May 1, 2011.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Prairie Island Nuclear Power Plant」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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