Duke Energy and county officials will be testing the sirens at a New Hill nuclear plant Wednesday. However, many residents were concerned Monday morning when they heard sirens going off at the plant.
The 85 outdoor warning sirens around Harris Nuclear Plant will be tested for five to 30 seconds between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. on Wednesday, July 10.
However, WRAL News received reports of sirens going off Monday morning. County officials said there is no emergency but did not clarify why the sirens went off. At 8:35 a.m., a public safety alert was sent out:
“Wake County reports a siren activation of the emergency alert system for the Duke Energy Harris Nuclear Plant, located southwest of Raleigh, North Carolina. There is NO emergency. NO protective actions are needed by the public.”
Duke Energy said it has received information that some emergency warning sirens inadvertently sounded in the emergency planning zone around Harris Nuclear Plant Monday morning.
“The plant is operating safely,” Duke Energy told WRAL News. “There is no emergency at the plant.”
Duke Energy said it’s working with local county and state emergency management to determine the cause of the siren activation.
“False alarm or not, we do take this seriously,” said Jason Wheatley, Duke Energy spokesperson. “If there is a false alarm, we do want to know why that happened and what we can do to prevent it again in the future.
“We are going to investigate thoroughly and figure out what happened and find a way to prevent that from happening again in the future.”
The sirens will still be tested Wednesday, as planned. To ensure they are functioning properly, it may be necessary to test some sirens more than once. Testing is performed in cooperation with emergency officials in Chatham, Harnett, Lee and Wake counties.
Since this is a test, local broadcasting stations will not interrupt regular programming to broadcast Emergency Alert System (EAS) messages. If there was a real emergency at the plant requiring the sirens to be sounded, local radio and television stations would broadcast information and instructions to the public.
For more information, go to duke-energy.com.