Beyond Nuclear today issued a press release calling on the NRC and FEMA to fulfill their emergency preparedness obligations pertaining to evacuations due to a nuclear accident during a pandemic. Beyond Nuclear also reiterated its demand that potassium iodide (KI) be distributed to residents living within 10 miles of an operating reactor -- and made available to those living up to 50 miles away -- to be taken promptly upon notification of a nuclear accident while simultaneously evacuating.
U.S. unprepared for a nuclear accident during a pandemic
Michigan floods expose impossible challenges of mass evacuations during Covid-19
Emergency preparedness must include direct delivery of potassium iodide to all residents around nuclear plants
Takoma Park, MD, Date— Two dam failures and catastrophic flooding in central Michigan, which also prompted a low-level emergency notification (NCR event #54719) at a nearby nuclear research reactor in Midland, have exposed the almost impossible challenge of evacuating people to safety during simultaneous catastrophic events.
The sudden need to evacuate large numbers of people from severe flooding — also threatening to compromise a Dow chemical facility that uses a research reactor — during a time of national lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, raises “serious questions and concerns about the emergency response readiness and the viability of evacuation that might simultaneously include a radiological accident,” said Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Oversight Project at Beyond Nuclear, a national anti-nuclear advocacy organization.
Michigan authorities were forced to face a “no-win compromise” between protecting the public from exposure to Covid-19 while at the same time moving people out of harm’s way after heavy rains caused failures at the Edenville and Sanford dams, leading to devastating floods. The Dow plant insists there have been no chemical or radiological releases, but the situation will be evaluated once floodwaters recede. Fortunately, no full scale commercial nuclear power plant was in the path of the Michigan floods.
Operating nuclear power stations are required by federal and state laws to maintain radiological emergency preparedness to protect populations within a ten-mile radius from the release of radioactivity following a serious nuclear accident. These measures include mass evacuations. Read the rest of the press release.