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Readiness Preparedness is an essential prerequisite for effective nuclear emergency management. International exercises are held systematically to determine whether the national systems in place are prepared and can respond swiftly and effectively. The USIE system is designed to support such exercises. "For the first time, this simple-to-use and effective system streamlines mechanisms for reporting and sharing information about incidents and emergencies in a secure information exchange channel," said Elena Buglova, the Head of the IAEA's Incident and Emergency Centre. This innovation strengthens international coordination, she noted, "which will improve the speed and effectiveness of the global response to nuclear and radiological emergencies of all types."

Background

Until the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986, there was no information exchange system. Immediately following that accident, the IAEA's Member States negotiated the so-called Emergency Conventions to ensure that in the event of a nuclear accident, the country that suffers an accident would issue timely, authenticated information, while the Member States that could field technical support, would do so in a coordinated fashion, if such support is requested by the State concerned. When concerns regarding the malicious use of nuclear or radioactive materials grew, the IAEA established the IEC in 2005 to serve as a global focal point for emergency preparedness and response to nuclear and radiological incidents and emergencies. The IEC develops standards, guidelines and tools like USIE. The IEC staff provide support, training, global event reporting, information exchange and around-the-clock assistance to Member States dealing with nuclear and radiological events. Fundamentally, the IEC is a global coordinator for international expertise from the IAEA, as well as from other international organizations, such as the FAO, WHO, or WMO.

Before USIE's launch in June 2011, two secure websites were operated to provide emergency and support information: The Emergency Notification and Assistance Convention Website, or ENAC, was set up to exchange information on nuclear accidents or radiological emergencies. The Nuclear Event Web-based System, or NEWS, is a joint project of the IAEA, OECD/NEA and World Association of Nuclear Operators that provides authoritative information on nuclear and radiological events, using the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, or INES. See Story Resources for more information.

On June 7, there was a fire -- apparently unrelated to the flooding -- in an electrical switchgear room at Fort Calhoun. For about 90 minutes, the pool where spent fuel is stored had no power for cooling. OPPD reported that "offsite power remained available, as well as the emergency diesel generators if needed." But the incident was yet another reminder of the plant's potential vulnerability

And so, Fort Calhoun remains on emergency alert because of the flood -- which is expected to worsen by early next week. On June 9, the Army Corps of Engineers announced PDF that the Missouri River would crest at least two feet higher in Blair than previously anticipated

The Fort Calhoun plant has never experienced a flood like this before

this spring, heavy rains and high snowpack levels in Montana, northern Wyoming, and the western Dakotas have filled reservoirs to capacity, and unprecedented releases from the dams are now reaching Omaha and other cities in the Missouri River valley. Floodgates that haven't been opened in 50 years are spilling 150,000 cubic feet per second -- enough water to fill more than a hundred Olympic-size swimming pools in one minute. And Fort Calhoun isn't the only power plant affected by flooding on the Missouri: The much larger Cooper Nuclear Station in Brownville, Nebraska, sits below the Missouri's confluence with the Platte River -- which is also flooding. Workers at Cooper have constructed barriers and stockpiled fuel for the plant's three diesel generators while, like their colleagues at Fort Calhoun, they wait for the inevitable.

NRC spokesman Roger Hannah says the agency was not immediately aware of any damage at nuclear power plants in the southeast. Hannah said he knew of no other shut reactor but that unusual events were reported at a dozen other plant sites. Louisa County is about 40 miles northwest of Richmond.

Medical professionals working in and around existing and proposed nuclear power plants were also being trained in how to deal with the aftermath of a nuclear incident, he added.India is increasingly looking to nuclear power to meet the demands of its fast-growing economy and burgeoning population as well as to provide energy security.The South Asian country currently has 20 nuclear power plants, generating some 4,780 megawatts of power. Seven other reactors with a capacity of 5,300 megawatts are under construction.

The government aims to increase nuclear output to 63,000 MW by 2032.

At Exelon Nuclear's Peach Bottom-2 and -3 reactors, about 18 miles south of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the Conowingo Pond is expected to crest at 109 feet above sea level, Sheehan said.

Plant procedures require the reactors to be shut down if the pond reaches 111 feet above sea level. Exelon is working to control pond levels by using the spillways at the Conowingo Dam, he said. Exelon Nuclear does not anticipate it will need to shut down Three Mile Island-1 due to flooding, company spokeswoman April Schilpp said Thursday. "We have several feet of margin before any action would be required," Schilpp said. She declined to disclose at what point the plant would be required to shut down, but said it is a function of the rate of river flow and river level.

At PPL's Susquehanna-1 and -2 units in Salem Township, about 70 miles northeast of Harrisburg, the Susquehanna River is cresting at 39 feet above river level, Sheehan said. The plant entered its abnormal operating procedure for flooding earlier Thursday. "Major safety-related structures and components" of the plants are located about 75 feet above river level, he said. "The biggest impact on the plant" might be on its water intakes, which are being closely monitored, he said. There might be problems getting plant personnel to and from the site, so some staff might remain at the plant overnight, he said

But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff’s report does not call for moving more of the fuel.When the commission received an oral report from a six-member “task force” it appointed to study the safety implications of Fukushima, one commissioner, William C. Ostendorff, said he had received letters from members of Congress asking for wider use of the casks, however.But Charles L. Miller, who led the task force, replied that removing the fuel would not do much to reduce the basic problem, which is that fuel rods remain in the pool, and if cooling is knocked out, the water that provides protection against melting and the release of radioactive materials will boil away.

“Before you can take it out of the pool, it has to be at least five years old, and by that time, we call it, for lack of a better word, cold fuel,’’ Mr. Miller said.At the briefing on Tuesday, Mr. Fertel mentioned other recommendations from the task force, including better instruments for altering operators to how much water is in the pools and new ways of adding water in an emergency. Pulling more fuel out, he said, would provide certain advantages but is also certain to expose workers to radiation in the course of the transfer.

Fukushima used dry casks as well, and those appear to have survived without damage, Mr. Fertel said, although they have not been thoroughly inspected. “They’re fine, but so are the pools,’’ he said.

They were not unscathed, however; debris flew into the pools after the buildings surrounding them blew up in hydrogen explosions.

The task force also refrained from recommending changes in emergency planning zones, despite the embassy’s recommendation during the crisis for Americans to stay 50 miles away from Fukushima. In the United States, emergency evacuation planning is required within 10 miles of any reactor.

Mr. Fertel said the recommendation to evacuate to 50 miles “was based not on information, but on the lack thereof.’’

Opponents of nuclear power have argued that the commission should cease all extensions of reactors’ operating licenses until it has digested the lessons of the accident in Japan. But Mr. Fertel noted that since March 11, the commission has issued 20-year license extensions for the Vermont Yankee, Palo Verde, Prairie Island, Salem and Hope Creek reactors, and allowed higher power outputs for Limerick and Point Beach.

I strongly ask you to do whatever you can to protect the children.Another thing is, what I strongly feel when I'm doing the decontamination work in Fukushima is that emergency decontamination and permanent decontamination should be dealt with separately.

We've been doing a lot of emergency decontamination work. For example, if you look at this diagram, you will notice that the bottom of this slide is where small children put their hands on. Every time the rain stream down the slide, more radioactive materials accumulate. There can be a difference in radiation level between the right side and the left side. If such difference occurs and if the average radiation of the slide is 1 microsievert, then one side can measure as high as 10 microsieverts. We should do more emergency decontamination work in such places.

The ground right under the roof gutter is also where children frequently put their hands on. If you use high pressure washer you can reduce the radiation level from 2 microsieverts to 0.5 microsievert.However, it is extremely difficult to lower the level to less than 0.5microsievert, because everything is contaminated. Buildings, trees, whole areas. You can lower radiation dose of one place, but very difficult to do that for the whole area.Then, how much will it cost when you seriously do the decontamination work? In case of "Itai-Itai Disease" caused by cadmium poisoning, to decontaminate half of cadmium-contaminated area of roughly 3,000 hectare, the government has spent 800 billion yen so far.How much money will be needed if we have to decontaminate the area 1,000 times as big?

Finally, Professor Kodama has 4 demands, although probably due to the time constraint he was able to elaborate only three:So, I'd like to make four urgent requests.First, I request that the Japanese government, as a national policy, innovate the way to measure radiation of food, soil, and water, through using the Japan's state-of-the-art technology such as semiconductor imaging detectors. This is absolutely within Japan's current technological capability.

Second, I request that the government enact a new law as soon as possible in order to reduce children's radiation exposure. Right now, what I'm doing is all illegal.The current "Radiation Damage Prevention Law" specifies the amount of radiation and the types of radionuclides that each institution can handle. Now Tokyo University is mobilizing its workforce in its twenty-seven Radioisotope Centers to help decontaminate Minami-Soma City, but many of the centers don't have a permission to handle cesium. It's illegal to transport it by cars. However, we cannot leave highly radioactive materials to mothers and teachers there, so we put them all in drums and bring them back to Tokyo. To receive them is illegal. Everything is illegal.

The Diet is to blame for leaving such situations as they are. There are many institutions in Japan, such as Radioisotope Centers at national universities, which have germanium detectors and other state-of-the-art detectors. But how can we, as the nation, protect our children if these institutions' hands are tied? This is the result of the gross negligence by the Diet.

Third, I request that the government as a national policy mobilize technological power of the private sector in order to decontaminate the soil. There are many companies with expertise of radiation decontamination; chemical companies such as Toray and Kurita, decontamination companies such as Chiyoda Technol and Atox, andconstruction companies such as Takenaka Corporation. Please mobilize their power to create a decontamination research center in Fukushima as soon as possible.

It will take tens of trillions of yen to do the decontamination work. I'm gravely concerned that it might become public works project involving concessions. [In other words, business as usual in Japan where only the businesses and politicians benefit.]We don't have the luxury to spare a single second considering the financial condition of the Japanese government. We must figure out how we really do the decontamination work.What on earth is the Diet doing, when 70,000 people are forced out of their homes and wandering?

nuc_11081201k.pdf 9.3 Order licensees to do the following until rulemaking is complete:Determine and implement the required staff to fill all necessary positions for responding to a multiunit event. Add guidance to the emergency plan that documents how to perform a multiunit dose assessment (including releases from spent fuel pools) using the licensee's site-specific dose assessment software and approach.Conduct periodic training and exercises for multiunit and prolonged SBO scenarios. Practice (simulate) the identification and acquisition of offsite resources, to the extent possible.Ensure that EP equipment and facilities are sufficient for dealing with multiunit and prolonged SBO scenarios. Provide a means to power communications equipment needed to communicate onsite (e.g., radios for response teams and between facilities) and offsite (e.g., cellular telephones, satellite telephones) during a prolonged SBO.Maintain ERDS capability throughout the accident.[p.57]

The No. 5 and No. 6 reactors on the north side of the plant also shared electrical sources with each other, but those two reactors were not connected to the four to the south. The plan for reconstruction work considered installing steel towers to link the electrical cables or digging tunnels through which cable could connect all six reactors. The former TEPCO executive said, "An estimate of the construction needed for the reconstruction work, including related civil engineering work, totaled several billions of yen and there was a plan to go ahead with the work." However, according to an explanation by other TEPCO officials, there were many structures and buried objects that would have been a hindrance to laying cables in the plant and there were also concerns that if the electrical cables became too long a drop in voltage might have occurred. Those reasons led TEPCO officials to abandon any further consideration for more specific plans.

Katsuta, the Meiji University nuclear engineering professor, said the buried objects could have been moved and any voltage drop could have been overcome by using transformers. Shiori Ishino, a professor emeritus of nuclear engineering at the University of Tokyo, added, "Since they hurriedly implemented measures after the accident, why could they not have done similar work beforehand? A serious analysis of what was involved in the decision should be made." In response, a TEPCO spokesperson said while it is true that consideration was given for the reconstruction work at one time, there are no documents showing that a decision was ever made on it. "Connecting cables between the six reactors after the accident was nothing more than an immediate measure taken during an emergency," the spokesperson said.

Government decontamination efforts questioned by a local fish dealer, who points out that the road outside his shop, used by school students, was washed down with a high pressure hose. He says all the sand and dirt simply shifted and accumulated in the gutter, raising the radiation level there. Radioactive dirt then blows back onto the road from neighboring fields. - Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries finally decided in October to survey contamination in the hills and forested areas – every time the wind blows it brings more contamination down from the heavily contaminated hills. - In summary, ignoring isotopes other than cesium is not acceptable, after Chernobyl the Ukrainian govt. produced accurate contamination maps for each separate nucleotide, and Japan should do so urgently. Residents lack of faith in the government’s lifting of the zone is entirely understandable.

Making Existing Reactors More Secure against Terrorist Attacks The NRC should revise its assumptions about terrorists' capabilities to ensure nuclear plants are adequately protected against credible threats, and these assumptions should be reviewed by U.S. intelligence agencies. The NRC should modify the way it judges force-on-force security exercises by assessing a plant's "margin to failure," rather than whether the plant merely passes or fails. The U.S. government should establish a program for licensing private security guards that would require successful completion of a federally supervised training course and periodic recertification. Making New Reactors More Secure against Terrrorist Attacks The NRC should require new reactor designs to be safer than existing reactors. The NRC should require new reactor designs to be more secure against land- and water-based terrorist attacks.

Improving the NRC's Cost-Benefit and Risk-Informed Analyses The NRC should increase the value it assigns to a human life in its cost-benefit analyses so the value is consistent with other government agencies. The NRC should require plant owners to calculcate the risk of fuel damage in spent fuel pools as well as reactor cores in all safety analyses. The NRC should not make decisions about reactor safety using probabilistic risk assessments (PRAs) until it has corrected its flawed application of this tool. Ensuring Public Participation The NRC should fully restore the public's right to obtain information and question witnesses in hearings about changes to existing power plant licenses and applications for new licenses.