Op-ed: Assessing emergency plans

M V Ramana

Emergency plans for dealing with large-scale accidents at hazardous facilities, should be made public and evaluated by independent agencies or people with the necessary expertise. Inadequate plans should be immediately rectified and the necessary infrastructure for dealing with emergencies developed

The nuclear power plant that is closest to New York City is at a place called Indian Point. For many years, the proximity of this reactor to such a large and crowded city has been a matter of concern. A large-scale accident could lead to hundreds of thousands of people being exposed to radiation. In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, the possibility that such a release of radiation may come about as a result of a terrorist attack added to these concerns. Several civil society groups have advocated shutting down the reactor.

Last summer, during his re-election campaign, George Pataki, Governor of New York State, hired James Lee Witt, an independent consultant and a former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to evaluate the ability of Indian Point’s off-site emergency plan to protect the public from a release of radiation from the plant. Last week, Witt released his detailed report, which concluded that these plans are inadequate.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requires an approved evacuation plan for residents within a 10-mile radius of a nuclear power plant. The plan must be developed by the municipalities in the affected areas and be approved by the state and accepted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the NRC. It was this plan that was evaluated by James Witt.

Last September, FEMA also carried out a mock exercise to assess the capabilities of New York State and the local governments in implementing their emergency response plans and procedures to protect public health and safety during a radiological emergency at Indian Point. FEMA’s report on the exercise that was released last month identified 13 areas requiring corrective action, along with seven unresolved issues from earlier years. New York State’s Emergency Management Office now has to come up with updated plans to incorporate these areas of concern by May 2. If it fails the case goes to the NRC, which can order the Indian Point plant to be shut down.

These evaluations of the emergency preparedness at Indian Point have great relevance everywhere. Witt’s report, in particular, offers two important insights. First, the “plans are built on compliance with regulations, rather than a strategy that leads to structures and systems to protect from radiation exposure”. In other words, the primary aim of the nuclear plant owners is to persuade authorities to allow them to run their reactor rather than genuinely try to minimise risks to the general population.

Second, the plans appear to be “based on the premise that people will comply with official government directions rather than acting in accordance with what they perceive to be their best interests”. One example is that “the plans do not consider the reality and impacts of spontaneous evacuation”.

As mentioned earlier, emergency plans for US nuclear reactors call for the evacuation of all people within a ten-mile radius of the plant. But in the event of an actual accident panic would set in and people further away from the plant would naturally try to flee the region. In the ensuing chaos the areas closest to the reactor that would be ordered to evacuate first (since they would be the first to be exposed to the radioactive cloud) would probably be the last ones to get out.

There is also the issue of who would organise, oversee and conduct the evacuation. Indeed, another study commissioned by a local municipality in the vicinity of the reactor found that the police, fire personnel and bus drivers would abandon their posts to get their families out of harm’s way. All of this should come as no surprise to anyone except those involved in running such hazardous facilities or bureaucrats whose job it is to assure the public living in the vicinity of such facilities that they would be taken care of in case of an accident.

One reason for the attention paid to Indian Point is that it is located in a crowded part of the country. The relevance of this case to Pakistan and India with their generally large population densities is obvious. If a country like the US lacks adequate plans and the necessary infrastructure to deal with a nuclear reactor emergency in such a crowded region, then one can easily imagine how much worse the state of affairs in South Asia would be. It is perhaps because of this that authorities in India and Pakistan have usually made emergency plans for nuclear reactors inaccessible to the public, who should be the real audience for these plans.

In one case where the emergency plan was accidentally revealed, it was discovered to be deeply flawed. This was the reactor at Kakrapar in Gujarat, which is adjacent to a river — which has only one bridge across it in the vicinity of the reactor. Thus, in the event of a large-scale evacuation, there would have been a traffic bottleneck at the bridge. The plan also absurdly requires people in villages and towns further up the river to come towards the reactor first, cross the bridge and then go away from the reactor. Finally, several of the facilities, such as schools, assigned as temporary shelters were grossly inadequate for the likely number of people to be housed there.

Plans for dealing with large-scale accidents at hazardous facilities, especially nuclear reactors, everywhere should be made with the active involvement of the people living in the vicinity of the facility. In case they have not been developed in such a manner, they should be evaluated by independent agencies with the necessary expertise. If they are found to be inadequate, then these plans should be immediately rectified and the necessary infrastructure for dealing with emergencies developed. If that is not possible, the facilities should be closed down. There can be no excuse for not doing whatever possible to mitigate the danger to public health.

M V Ramana is a physicist and research staff member at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security and co-editor of Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream

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