RESPONSE


Cracked reactor


Walter H. Buch and Richard L. Bigelow review emergency planning and response at US nuclear power plants


N 60 CBNW 2013/01


uclear incidents – ranging from accidents at nuclear power plants (NPPs) to nuclear weapons detonation of low-yield or radiological material release (‘dirty bombs’) – are among the most feared, emotional, and terrifying incidents that the


general public could potentially face. In response, governments and nuclear companies have developed a wide variety of emergency response plans and organizations to address nuclear incidents. The five main nuclear incidents are the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the Three Mile Island (TMI) reactor accident in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986 and the tsunami- induced incident at the Fukushima Daiichi reactors in Japan in 2011. In addition, there have been dozens of both commercial and military incidents where moderate to substantial amounts of radiation were released to the environment – including releases from sunken nuclear submarines and weapons involved in aircraſt accidents. This high-level overview focuses on emergency planning and response in the US with the assumption that plans and efforts


there reflect those of other developed nations, and that today, emergency planning and response programmes in the commercial nuclear industry have become more developed and certainly more frequently exercised than are those for other energy industries.


TMI – landmark incident Before TMI, emergency planning was occasionally exercised. However, this incident showed a “need for improved planning, response, and communication by federal, state, and local governments to deal with reactor accidents” (US Nuclear Regulatory Commission [USNRC] Backgrounder on Emergency Preparedness at NPPs). A typical emergency plan at a US commercial NPP comprised a five-page document. There


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