It’s been more than two years since the Fukushima nuclear
power plant experienced a meltdown after the earthquake and tsunami. The environmental disaster resulting from the
meltdown has received some publicity of late when solutions were being sought
to contain the contaminated water leaking (or flowing) from the site. We have heard very little about the impact of
this on local residents. Wednesday’s New
York Times provided a glimpse at the effect of this disaster on residents more
than 5 miles away.
Unfortunately residents up to 20 miles away from the plant
were relocated and are unable to return to their homes – even now. I think I imagined that people within a few
miles of the plant were certainly affected – but I have to admit I had my head
in the sand in terms of how many people were affected. A total of 11 towns were evacuated. Nearly 83,000 refugees evacuated from these
areas are still not able to go home. We
can see an uninhabitable area surrounding the plant for miles – I assume the
shape of the area relates to weather and geographic features. These residents are in ‘limbo’ regarding
whether it will ever be safe to return. Here is a link to the article with the zone affected
surrounding the plant identified - (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/world/asia/japans-nuclear-refugees-still-stuck-in-limbo.html?smid=pl-share
) as you can see people up to 30 miles away have contamination levels in the ‘yellow’(20
to 50 millisieverts/yr) or ‘red’ zone (more than 50 millisieverts/yr).
What does this mean? Public exposure is suggested by the
International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) of no more than
0.3mSv/year exposure from waste management and no more than 0.1mSv/yr for
prolonged exposure. For comparison - in homes
with radon exposure, the remediation level is 3-10 mSv/yr and for occupational
exposure the dose is 20mSv/yr. Doses from
20mSv/yr to 100mSv/yr are considered ‘emergency exposure situations’. (information on exposure rates can be found in
ICRP Publication 103, Annals of the ICRP, 37(2-4), 2007. Or try
this link: http://www.icrp.org/publication.asp?id=ICRP%20Publication%20103
)
As we see here – disasters do happen – fortunately for most
of us they are rare events and typically they affect us only a short amount of
time – but unfortunately for a small few the impact is catastrophic. I have
written previously that we don’t seem to expect that things like this could
happen to us – but this example tells us – that yes, they do happen. We expect that the power company and public
officials have assured that regardless of natural or other type of disaster
scenario the plants will be safe – yet we see failures and the devastating
consequences. While we learn much from
disasters and apply it to preventing the next catastrophe, I do not believe we
can ever imagine all the possibilities. This
of course leaves us open to being the next group with an unexpected or
unprecedented disaster.
Recently we experienced an era where the business side of
most operations (including health care, and utilities I am sure) decided that
having ‘just in time’ inventory was enough – one replacement for parts or
equipment would be enough – we decided not to stock up for the rainy day – but to
better use that investment elsewhere to balance the books. As we see with the massive power outages or
transportation problems lately – not having needed supplies available to
perform operations affects us regularly.
Luckily these problems are few and far between – but we are no less stunned
and outraged when they occur.
I imagine with the nuclear power plants you and I live near
to – we tend to think a disaster of this sort couldn’t happen here – we have
safety standards and safety or disaster planning that would limit the
impact. Unfortunately this may not be
true – sometimes we really don’t have control over things – sometimes it is
impossible to control things (like with the events in Fukushima or hurricanes
or… ).
We do have nuclear power here in CT. I wonder how many of us could be impacted in
a major disaster such as this? If we
drew a 20 or 30 mile circle around our plant (or our storage facility from our
closed reactor), who would be impacted? If I bought a home close to the plant I would
knowingly be taking that risk – but how close? I did not choose to live within
a few miles of a nuclear plant – but as we see many things can affect the plume
of such a disaster. Were we all aware
that this could affect our ability to live freely in our own homes? What do I or anyone else know of risks like this!
Our closed reactor, CT Yankee was disassembled and its
contaminated fuel rods and irradiated enclosures are stored right here in
CT. The federal government was supposed
to open a used fuel storage facility in 1998 (part of the Nuclear Waste Policy
Act) – but still has not done so. So we
have one containment facility in CT. I
imagine this is a low risk for disaster site – but I really do not know. We also have a working facility, Millstone in
CT. Over 100,000 people live within 10
miles of that facility (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millstone_Nuclear_Power_Plant)
. (The Nuclear Regulatory Commission identifies
a 10 mile radius plume exposure zone within which breathing airborne
contaminants would be dangerous and a 50 mile zone for ingestion of food or
drink contaminated by radioactivity - that may be most of CT Wikipedia indicated
nearly 3 million in this zone) (Here is a link to their info: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/emerg-plan-prep-nuc-power-bg.html).
That is a lot of exposure and a lot of people
to relocate. Imagining the evacuation
required boggles my mind… those who are
still in the process of recovery from our recent natural disasters can probably
still relate to what is involved when your home is destroyed or declared uninhabitable.
My hearts go out to the residents of these 11 towns in Japan
– I imagine that like me – they never expected that their homes would be devastated
in this way.
