Shearon Harris
The Shearon Harris Nuclear Generating Station is located on the shores of Harris Lake near New Hill, North Carolina. A single Westinghouse pressurized-water reactor produces 900 megawatts. The plant came online in May 1987.
In 2006, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted Shearon an extension on its operating license through 2047. Owner-operator Progress Energy has also submitted an application to expand the facility, adding two more reactors, each of which would add another 1.1 gigawatts to its capacity. This application is still pending; if approved, the new reactors would not be online until 2018.
Because Shearon Harris is a fairly new facility, it is not known if asbestos exposure has been a major issue for employees working at the plant. Use of asbestos-containing materials were gradually phased out starting in 1980, largely due to the revelation in a court case three years earlier that demonstrated a corporate conspiracy among Raysbestos, W.R. Grace and Johns-Manville – all major manufacturers of asbestos products – to hide information about the health effects of their products from the general public.
Prior to that time however, power generation facilities normally contained large amounts of asbestos insulation. Asbestos is resistant not only to heat and flame, but electrical current as well. Generators, boilers and turbine combustion engines and thermal control devices were all insulated with asbestos-containing materials as well as pipe and conduit lagging, electrical cloth and junction boxes.
Asbestos illness has been established as a work-related hazard for those employed at power generation facilities. In a Puerto Rican study published in 2007, over 130 out of 1100 chest x-rays from such workers showed signs of asbestos disease.
Today, both the EPA and OSHA have issued strict regulations that govern worker safety as well as asbestos issues in general. However, a asbestos disease usually has a very long latency period; symptoms usually take decades to develop, and by the time they are diagnosed, it is usually too late.
The good news is that recent tools have been developed that allow pathologists to detect early signs of asbestos disease; it is therefore important to receive regular checkups if possible if you believe you were exposed to asbestos at a power plant.
In the first two-thirds of the 20th century, it was extremely common for plants, mills, and factories to be constructed with the mineral asbestos because it excelled at blocking fire. It is ironic that protecting human life was usually one of the primary justifications for using asbestos in places for the outcome was in fact to put employees at risk of serious illness or death due to inhalation of or other contact with asbestos. The health conditions caused by asbestos include "miner's lung" and cancer; the biggest risk of developing these conditions occurs when products containing asbestos become fragile, releasing particles into the air where they are easy to inhale or ingest. Also, mesothelioma, which is a rare but deadly cancer affecting the lining surrounding the lungs, has been proven to be caused by even low levels of asbestos exposure.
Those who work around asbestos in present times are generally protected from inhalation because of the numerous guidelines regulating its use, inclusion in products and scrapping. In earlier days, though, workers frequently were expected to toil in areas in which asbestos dust was not filtered; in many cases, the risks of asbestos exposure were unknown. And if companies did not provide decontamination methods, employees carried particles of asbestos home in their clothes and hair, which exposed others in their household to this deadly toxin.
Pleural mesothelioma and other asbestos-related illnesses often take a very long time to appear, and symptoms can be difficult to distinguish from those of less serious conditions; therefore, men and women who worked at these sites at any time in the past, as well as their spouses and children, are advised to chat with their medical care providers about their history of asbestos contact. Also, workers who may have been negligently exposed should seek legal guidance with a mesothelioma attorney.
Sources
Bowker, Michael. Fatal Deception: The Terrifying True Story of How Asbestos is Killing America. New York: Touchstone, 2003.
Cabrera-Santiago, Manuel et al. "Prevalence of Asbestos-Related Disease Among Electrical Power Generation Workers in Puerto Rico." Presentation at American Public Health Association Annual Meeting, 2007.
Progress Energy Corporate Website. “Harris Plant.”
http://www.progress-energy.com/aboutenergy/powerplants/nuclearplants/harris.asp
