Thursday, May 17, 2012

The Pen is Mightier than the Sword

Metaphorical Journey by mimiMatelot

Imagine nuclear reactors turned into windmills powered only by the forces of Nature. Imagine a world happy, safe and at peace. Imagine just for a moment ...  and then pick up your pen and let the powers that be know how you feel. Ideas and thoughts left in the mind alone will never be moved into action.
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Nuclear power is going to be with us for a long, long time. It is imperative that we work hard to make our environment and our people as safe as possible until the final chapter on nuclear reactors is written.

Hopefully we learn from past mistakes and disasters like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima and take actions to insure greater public safety. In March of 2011 when the Japanese suffered a triple-breakdown; earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in retrospect it is easy to see that the current plan in place was not sufficient.

While the Japanese had an evacuation zone from 10 to 25 miles set up, the United States government was urging its citizens to evacuate within a 50 mile zone of the Japanese nuclear plant. That was a year ago.

In the United States today the advanced planning directive for an evacuation zone is still restricted to 10 miles! The NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) is currently working on expanding emergency planning zones and improving regulations.

The deadline for public comments is July 16, 2012 and now would be the perfect time to make your comments known. Remember "The Pen is Mightier than the Sword" and as citizens it is our duty to give our input when asked. After all it might just make a difference.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has published the Petition for Rulemaking to expand Emergency Planning Zones around nuclear reactors written by NIRS and submitted with 37 Co-Petitioners on February 15, 2012. About 4500 people have since signed on as Co-Petitioners.

The deadline for public comments is July 16, 2012. You can submit your comments here.

In addition here are full articles written on the subject to give you more background information. Do not delay do your part as a concerned citizen. Many of you reading this blog live perilously close to nuclear power plants today and you should be concerned.



  1. AP IMPACT: Evacs and Drills pared at nuke plants  
  2. Time for the Public to Speak Out Tell NRC to Expand Nuclear Evacuation Zones
  3. And my email from the Nuclear Information and Resource Service:
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6930 Carroll Avenue, #340, Takoma Park, MD 20912; 301-270-6477; nirsnet@nirs.org; www.nirs.org
EMERGENCY PLANNING PETITION NOW OPEN FOR PUBLIC COMMENT

PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR COMMENTS IN FAVOR OF EXPANDING EMERGENCY PLANNING ZONES; IMPROVING REGULATIONS

May 16, 2012

Dear Friends,

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has published the Petition for Rulemaking to expand Emergency Planning Zones around nuclear reactors written by NIRS and submitted with 37 Co-Petitioners on February 15, 2012. About 4500 people have since signed on as Co-Petitioners.

The deadline for public comments is July 16, 2012. You can submit your comments here.

The nuclear disasters at Fukushima and Chernobyl provide real-world and plain evidence that the current 10-mile emergency evacuation zones in the U.S. are simply too small, and cannot adequately protect the public from the possibility of acute radiation exposures. Moreover, as we have learned in recent months and years, women and children are more susceptible to radiation than men: regulations must protect the most vulnerable in society.

At both Fukushima and Chernobyl, actual evacuations took place far beyond 10 miles. And at Fukushima (as at Three Mile Island in 1979) far more people than those who were told to evacuate actually did evacuate--the Associated Press in an article today says that about one-third of the Fukushima evacuees left areas that were not part of the evacuation zones.

And yet, as the AP article today notes, the Federal Emergency Management Agency actually quietly weakened its emergency evacuation rules late last year (on December 23, to be exact).

For its part, the NRC says it does indeed intend to review its emergency planning rules, although not as part of its post-Fukushima safety changes. We believe that means it intends to review them through this Petition for Rulemaking--making your comments all the more important.

Improving emergency planning rules is obviously not a substitute for closing nuclear reactors. We all would prefer that such rules not be needed at all--because all reactors are closed. But that's not the world we live in; with 104 operating reactors in the U.S., it is essential that emergency evacuation rules reflect the real dangers each of these reactors presents. We do note, however, that some reactor sites would not be able to meet our proposed new regulations: those reactors would have to be closed simply by virtue of this petition--and that's progress!

Our petition calls for a three-tiered Emergency Planning Zone: the current 10-mile zone would expand to 25 miles, with all current requirements intact. A new zone from 25-50 miles would be established; utilities would be required to notify residents of these zones of evacuation routes if needed, but would not conduct biannual exercises. The Ingestion Pathway Zone, designed for interdiction of contaminated food, milk, and water, would be expanded from the current 50 miles to 100 miles. And a new rule would be established that would require emergency exercises to include scenarios of initiating or concurrent regionally-appropriate natural disasters.
We have prepared some sample comments for you to submit--you can do so here. However, we encourage you to edit these comments to reflect your own concerns, and to discuss emergency evacuation issues in your own communities. What happens if there is an earthquake in your area, or a hurricane? Has population growth in your area outstripped road networks? What about public transportation--how would people without cars be evacuated? The more you can address real-world problems, the better!

We encourage organizations to submit more detailed comments. And we encourage everyone to ask their state and local elected officials to submit comments (we soon will have a separate action aimed at Congressmembers).
You can submit your comments by e-mail through our website here. However, there are a number of other ways to submit comments if you'd prefer (or if you are contacting elected officials), you can find those, and a summary of the petition and issues raised, at the Federal Register website here.

And the original petition, along with sample resolutions for local officials and other background information, can be found on our Nuclear 911 website here.

Please contact Dominique French at NIRS if you have any questions about commenting. With a deadline of July 16, we have a lot of time to spread the word about this vital issue and get as many comments in as possible. The nuclear industry will certainly be putting in its own comments; we need to counteract their self-serving comments with the voices of the vast majority of the American people. Your help with outreach is essential. Note: this letter, with share buttons, can be found at the top of this page (as can all NIRS Alerts).
Thanks for all you do,
Michael Mariotte
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Servicenirsnet@nirs.org
www.nirs.org

P.S. We hope you will help us pay for this major emergency planning campaign--your activism and financial support are what keeps us going. Seriously. Please make a tax-deductible contribution here or after you submit your comments and help us keep doing this essential work.
Stay Informed:
NIRS on the web (stay up-to-date with the Nuclear Newsreel section on the front page, featuring the day's most interesting news on nuclear power and other energy issues): http://www.nirs.org



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