Now, here's the question Grand Forks, N.D., officials must talk about and act on:
What's the worst-case scenario that might involve the new nitrogen-fertilizer plant to be built northwest of town?
Residents of Grand Forks and the region need to know, not least because such awareness will make it far more likely the plant's owners and regulators will take extensive precautions to lower the risks.
On balance, officials were reassuring in a story in The Grand Forks Herald ("Officials say NPN plant is safe") It sounds like they have reason to be: The fertilizer plant in Texas that exploded in 2013 "had a different product than what Northern Plains Nitrogen will produce in Grand Forks," the story reported.
And the NPN product -- an ammonium nitrate solution, versus the dry ammonium product made in Texas -- apparently is much less of a risk.
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That's very useful information. But remember, people in or around the Texas plant before the explosion likely thought they were relatively safe, too.
Just as people in Grand Forks did in the years before the 1997 flood, and the residents of Dauphin County, Pa., did before Three Mile Island experienced its partial meltdown.
Again, what's the worst-case scenario for the proposed fertilizer plant?
What could happen in that "perfect storm" of circumstances in which everything goes wrong?
That's the kind of frank discussion Grand Forks residents want to hear. Because that's the kind of civic awareness the community needs to be comfortable with the plant, once residents are reassured the risks are being mitigated.
America's nuclear power plants are great parallels. Almost every Grand Forks resident has traveled to the Twin Cities on Interstate 94, and that means almost every resident has cruised past Xcel Energy's nuclear power plant in Monticello, Minn.
Did anyone think twice about it? And if the perfect job opportunity and family circumstances came up in Monticello tomorrow, would the plant's presence keep anyone from moving there?
For most people, the answer to both questions likely is no. Americans' confidence in nuclear-power-plant safety certainly isn't absolute, but it's very high.
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And rightly so, because of all the fail-safes, redundancies, high-level training and other safeguards to which regulators insist the nuclear industry adhere
The nuclear-power industry dreams up, talks about and plans for worst-case scenarios.
Regulators and the NPN plant's developers should do the same.
Grand Forks' public-safety officials talked about worst-case scenarios for the Uff-da Mud Run, going back and forth on requiring life jackets, as a caller to the Herald pointed out. The $1.85 billion fertilizer plant to be built just outside of town deserves just as much and more.
Editor's note: Dennis is the editorial writer for the Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald.
