When the Missouri River reaches 902 feet, Cooper Nuclear Station will shut down — the river is currently at 900.4 feet and Cooper is operating at full capacity.

UPDATE ****** A CBS affiliate out of Omaha reports that a levee is about to break near Brownville.

River falls short of Nebraska nuke plant shutdown

AP — The bloated Missouri River rose to within 18 inches of forcing the shutdown of a nuclear power plant in southeast Nebraska but stopped and ebbed slightly Monday, after several levees in northern Missouri failed to hold back the surging waterway.

The river has to hit 902 feet above sea level at Brownville before officials will shut down the Cooper Nuclear Plant, which sits at 903 feet, Nebraska Public Power District spokesman Mark Becker said.

[...] The river is expected to rise as much as 5 to 7 feet above flood stage in much of Nebraska and Iowa and as much as 10 feet over flood stage in parts of Missouri. The corps predicts the river will remain that high until at least August.

Becker said the river rose to 900.56 feet at Brownville on Sunday, then dropped to 900.4 feet later in the day and remained at that level Monday morning. The National Weather Service said the Missouri River set a new record Sunday at Brownville when its depth was measured at 44.4 feet. That topped the record of 44.3 feet set during the 1993 flooding.

[...] The Army Corps of Engineers said the river level at Brownville had surged about 2 feet from Saturday morning to Sunday morning and that it continued to rise because of heavy rain on the Nishnabotna River, which flows into the Missouri River from Iowa, and due to some erosion along a levee upstream at Hamburg, Iowa, that created a water pulse.

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See all related posts for Fort Calhoun & Cooper Nuclear Station »

• 20 JUNE: Missouri River flooding: 1-29 closures (near both of Nebraska’s nuclear plants)
• 20 JUNE: NRC Weekend Event Reports from Cooper Nuclear Station: Nebraska flooding
• 19 JUNE: ON THE MEDIA FAILURE of reporting the status of Nebraska’s nuclear plants and the flood
• 19 JUNE: Update: NOUE declared for Cooper Nuclear Station near Brownsville, NE
• 19 JUNE: Nebraska’s flooded nuclear plants: flooding may reach Kansas City by midweek
• 17 JUNE: The flooding of Nebraska’s nuclear power plants: Fort Calhoun and Cooper Nuclear Station
• 16 JUNE: What’s happening at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant? (19 miles north of Omaha, NE)
• 18 JUNE: Level 4 nuclear emergency / classifications: America (NRC) vs. International (INES)