Emergency planners in the U.S. and abroad have planned for earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant emergencies; however, insufficient thought has been given to the two central questions raised by the Tohoku earthquake in Japan:

• How vulnerable are nuclear facilities, including nuclear power plants, to effects of natural disasters?
• If nuclear accidents occur as a result of a natural disaster, how will this inhibit effective response to the subsequent nuclear accident?

As a result of the events in Japan, almost every nation with nuclear power plants has undertaken a review of safety conditions or procedures surrounding their power plants with these questions in mind. In the U.S., the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has undertaken a detailed evaluation of the Fukushima event and has recommended a series of changes in safety and emergency preparedness measures for nuclear plants (see Enhancing Reactor Safety in the 21st Century, The Near-Term Task Force Review of Insights from the Fukushima Dai-ichi Accident, U.S. NRC, July 2011).

Task force recommendations focus on a range of issues associated with facility protection and emergency preparedness. For the first time the NRC has considered the impact a natural disaster can have on the ability of the surrounding community to support response efforts if a plant, especially multi-unit plants, experience a complete power blackout.

Recommendations being considered include:

• Periodical training and exercises for multi-unit and prolonged station blackout (10 days or more of power outage) scenarios. Practice identification and acquisition of offsite resources, to the extent possible.
• Provide a means to power communications equipment needed to communicate on and offsite during a prolonged station blackout.
• Work with FEMA, states, and other external stakeholders to evaluate implementation of emergency preparedness at Fukushima and identify potential enhancements to the U.S. decision-making framework, including concepts of recovery and reentry.
• Initiate rulemaking to require licenses to confirm seismic hazards and flooding hazards every 10 years. If necessary, update design basis for facilities important to safety to protect against the updated hazards (Section 4.1.1—detailed recommendations 2.2).

Local jurisdiction emergency management organizations in the vicinity of nuclear power plants will almost certainly be drawn into the process of updating plans and participating in exercises which address new scenarios related to multi-unit events and prolonged power outages. In addition, emergency management organizations, although not required by pending NRC rules, will probably need to address the full range of emergency response issues associated with simultaneous catastrophic natural disasters and radiological/nuclear events.

Excerpted from the APWA Reporter, January 2012.