AM.MN: This is only a test. Had this been a real nuclear accident …

Do not be alarmed, you residents near the Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant. The state, federal and local officials you see acting as if there’s been a terrible nuclear accident are doing just that: acting. They do this every other year, at the insistence of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. This year, Tuesday and Wednesday just happen to be the days for the exercise. Now, if you see them scrambling around on Thursday, that could be different … 

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

MINNEAPOLIS: Ex-zombie vowed to kill RNC-protest snitch, say Texas officials. But it seems the woman — a former resident of Minneapolis, where in 2006 she was arrested along with six other Zombie Dance partiers — did not actually threaten to eat FBI informant Brandon Darby. [St. Paul Pioneer Press]

ST. PAUL: Inspection skipped on circus bleachers. It may seem like 2006 was a long time ago, even in zombie years, but that’s the last time city inspectors took a look at the Circus Juventus bleachers that collapsed Sunday. [St. Paul Pioneer Press]

FRIDLEY: Defense contractor BAE Systems delivers 314 pink slips. For people laid off from the Future Combat Systems project, that’s got to especially sting, coming on the same day President Obama told the VFW, “If a project doesn’t support our troops, we will not fund it. If a system doesn’t perform, we will terminate it.” [Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal; Stars and Stripes]

WORTHINGTON: “Don’t sleep in the subway, darling.” The subway Petula Clark was singing about in her 1967 hit was the kind of pedestrian tunnel that Worthington officials are proposing to go under Minnesota 60 — a state highway that is also getting a roundabout nearby. Very Euro. [Worthington Daily Globe]

DULUTH: Tribe calls casino contract bad, won’t pay city. The Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa will stop funding major street repairs from its take at downtown’s Fond-du-Luth Casino. (Insert your own broken-treaty gag here.) [Duluth News Tribune]

MINNEAPOLIS: Plank road to be history — again. The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board — which is now seeking its own taxing authority via a voter referendum — will pay more than $400,000 to repave in concrete a block-long, wood-plank road it built as an historic replica only six years ago. [Downtown Journal]