The only thing that separates Florida's Turkey Point nuclear plant from the ocean is a thin squiggle of land that doesn't seem to offer much protection.

There's a reason the place is so close to the water. Such plants need loads of H2O for constant cooling. But that need also means that, periodically, you'll come across a story about a potentially catastrophic storm whirling toward Turkey Point's nuclear facilities.

Turkey Point and its northern neighbor at St. Lucie, which is also perched precariously on a thin spit of land, have survived frightening hurricanes before. However, the storm currently blitzing toward Florida has the potential to be unlike any those facilities have seen.

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Hurricane Irma is a Category 5 storm, though it may have weakened a bit to Category 4 by the time it hits Florida, should it get there. Its winds have already howled at 185 miles per hour for a longer sustained period than any other Atlantic basin hurricane on record. It has killed at least nine people, and crushed Barbuda to the point that the island is reportedly unrecognizable.

This is the storm for which officials at Turkey Point and St. Lucie are preparing, and, despite Irma's enormity, such preparation is far from wholly new. Turkey Point's reactors rest inside six feet of concrete strengthened with steel, according to The Miami Herald. Though the plant is right next to the water, the reactors rest 20 feet above sea level, the better to avoid the swell of ocean water that comes with hurricanes.

The facilities are equipped with replacement generators and they have plans drawn up to fly replacement parts to the facility in case even those generators fail. Officials at Florida Power & Light, which operates the nuclear plants at Turkey Point and St. Lucie, are watching Irma's trajectory, and a spokesperson told the Herald they're ready to shut down the reactors well ahead of the storm's arrival, if it does indeed head their way.

The plants are located by the ocean. Image: Google

Officials did the same thing 25 years ago, on Aug. 24, 1992, when Hurricane Andrew passed over the facility as a Category 5 storm. That preparation, along with the thick concrete walls, stopped Andrew's 175 mile-per-hour winds from doing any damage to the reactors. Nevertheless, Turkey Point still sustained $90 million in damage, according to The Herald.

The facility had to rely on backup power for five days. The storm damaged Turkey Point's security system and wrecked its fire safety equipment. Andrew reportedly flattened nearly all of the facility's warning sirens. Anyone trying to get to parts of Turkey Point found tree trunks and downed poles blocking their path. Even some of the structures designed to survive hurricane-force storms took a hit.

Turkey Point is, after all, built to survive what officials believe to be the worst possible hurricane ocean surge if it came during the highest possible tide, and then some.

However, because of sea level rise, the plant faces a potentially bigger test with Irma compared to Andrew, since seas are higher now than they were in 1992. The National Hurricane Center is currently forecasting storm surge flooding of between 10 to 15 feet above ground level for Turkey Point, which — though the forecast is subject to revision as the storm approaches — is just a few feet below the height of critical infrastructure at the plant.

In addition, Hurricane Irma will be approaching southern Florida from the south, rather than the east, which will cause a potentially higher storm surge to batter the facility. If it hits at its current intensity, it would have stronger winds, although it is forecast to weaken somewhat before making landfall.

The problem with worst-case scenarios is that a "worst-case" is framed by the limits of information and imagination. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan was also built to withstand what officials believed to be the worst-imaginable scenario, but it didn't survive the tsunami that hit in 2011.

Officials in the United States have much more warning about Irma than officials in Japan had in 2011. Hopefully that will prove to be enough to keep Florida's nuclear plants safe.