Since the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission recommended on March 16 that US residents who are within 50 miles of the damaged Japanese nuclear power plants should evacuate, there has been a lot of speculation as to why the NRC would recommend such a large evacuation zone when the guidance for the plume exposure pathway emergency planning zone in the United States is for an area approximately 10 miles in radius.
I have participated in over a dozen evacuation studies over the last several years, many of them focused on nuclear plants, so I have been closely following the protective actions being taken around the Fukushima nuclear power plants in Japan.
I’ve been asked the question a couple of times over the past few days by family and friends, some who know I work in homeland security and emergency management, some who know I spent more than 12 years as an engineer at a nuclear power plant.
This morning on National Public Radio, I heard reports of the third reactor fire in Japan, and a fire now in a storage area. They are reporting an hourly release of radiation into the environment.
On Sunday morning, March 13, 2011, I was reading an AP story entitled “Japan fights nuclear threat” by Eric Talmadge and Yuri Kageyama that really pounded home for me again the need to educate the press and public at large prior to potential disasters, particularly ones involving radiation and nuclear plants.
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