Fukushima Lessons Prompt Review of US Evacuation Procedures

Taking lessons from the Fukushima nuclear incident in March 2011, the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will review standard evacuation procedures in the event of a threat to a US nuclear plant, an NRC official said at a think tank event Thursday (March 22nd).

Although current NRC standards require a 10-mile evacuation buffer and a 50-mile water/food contamination area around reactors, the agency is “going to evaluate this,” NRC Commissioner William Magwood said at a CSIS event today on “Fukushima’s Impact on Global Energy.”

He also confirmed more attention will be paid to the effects of possible nuclear incidents on commerce and food security.

“Our regulatory regime in the United States is based on the idea that we protect the public. We protect human safety…But it doesn’t look at socioeconomic impacts, long-term land contamination.”

This shift of emphasis may seem like a small development, but Magwood said, “I consider this to be a game change.”

The US 10-mile buffer zone is within the standards set out by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Also, control is given to state and local authorities if they believe the 10-mile zone should be extended in the event of a nuclear incident, NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko said in his April 2011 testimony in a Senate hearing a month after Fukushima.

But some US lawmakers are still unconvinced of the safety of Americans living near plants.

During the Fukushima incident, the IAEA found radiation had contaminated areas up to 25-miles from the reactor site.

Last week, the American Nuclear Society issued a 40-page report on the anniversary of Fukushima, urging the NRC to customize emergency plans for each of the US’s 65 nuclear power plants and to expand some of the 10-mile evacuation zones.

This was followed by a remark from Jaczko’s at the annual NRC conference confirming the agency had to look more closely at what the public wanted as related to long-term evacuation procedures.

“We somehow have to incorporate what the public is willing to tolerate,” he said March 15th, seeming to imply a more “individual” approach to evacuation procedures should be developed.

Jaczko was alluding to the more than 90,000 Japanese that are being kept from returning to their homes a year after the accident, something he said was “clearly” not acceptable in the US.

But the next day, Senator Bob Casey [D-PA] echoed the calls by the ANS, calling for “the NRC [to] consider whether individually determined distances at each location might better serve the needs of Pennsylvanians in an emergency,” a demand also in line with another report released by the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

“One year after Japan’s disaster, it is time that millions of Pennsylvanians living in close proximity to nuclear power plants know that the unique characteristics of each plant have been taken into account in the development of evacuation plans,” Casey said his March 16th letter to the NRC.

The statements made today by Commissioner Magwood confirm the NRC is looking into the demands made by the senator and others.

But, Magwood ended his presentation by saying although the US is planning for all disaster contingencies, “US power plants are very safe…Similar events [to Fukushima] are very unlikely to occur in the United States.”

To watch the livefeed of footage from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, click here.