Brunswick Nuclear Generating Station

The Brunswick nuclear power plant, named for Brunswick County, North Carolina, covers. The site is adjacent to the town of Southport, North Carolina, and to wetlands and woodlands, and was opened in 1975.The site contains two General Electric boiling water reactors, which are cooled by water collected from the Cape Fear River and discharged into the Atlantic Ocean.Duke Energy Progress is the majority owner (81.7%) and operator of the Brunswick nuclear plant. The North Carolina Eastern Municipal Power Agency owns the remaining 18.3%. Duke Energy Progress is currently in the process of buying The North Carolina Eastern Municipal Power Agency's 18.3% Stake at Brunswick nuclear power plant. (Duke Energy completed its merger with Progress Energy on July 2, 2012.)The Brunswick plants' proximity to the Cape Fear River and the Atlantic Ocean allowed the designers to take in cooling water from the Cape Fear river and discharge it into the Atlantic off the coast of Oak Island. Fish, crustaceans, and other debris are removed from the cooling water via a filtration system. The water then flows through the nuclear plant and discharges into a five mile long canal which passes under the Intra-Coastal Waterway at one point.Surrounding populationThe 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.