Post-disaster Fukushima: Up to 30 mile Impact

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.