Blog
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Geiger Readings for April 11, 2013
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on April 11, 2013
Ambient office = .070 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .059 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain = .068 microsieverts per hour
Bartlett pear from local grocery store = .083 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .134 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .117 microsieverts per hour
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Nuclear Accidents 14 – Evacuation
Back around 1980, I volunteered to review a U.S. Government plan from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to evacuate Seattle to east of the Cascades in case of the threat of nuclear war. I had been attending meetings with the Physicians for Social Responsibility and they needed someone with a technical background to evaluate the plan.
The plan contained instructions for moving the majority of the population of Seattle over the mountains to eastern Washington to be housed in schools and other public buildings. One of the problems with evacuating Seattle is the fact that the city is surrounded by mountains and bodies of water with only a few major highways.
I wasn’t sure exactly how to approach an evaluation until I came upon an analysis of a plan to evacuate Denver, Colorado. Denver has some of the same issues that Seattle has with respect to landscapes and limited highways. The evaluation was very thorough and took into account the fact that state transportation departments have very reliable calculation for estimating the number of lane blocking incidents in a given period of time based on the number of vehicles on the road in that period. A nuclear evacuation would yield much worse numbers than usual because of panicked drivers, people fleeing with low gas, etc. The Denver study concluded that within twelve hours of a call for evacuation EVERY major freeway out of Denver would be blocked and impassable. The original Denver plan called for a three day evacuation. The evaluation said that authorities would be lucky to evacuate the city in three weeks given what would certainly happen on the roads.
Comparing the Seattle evacuation plan with the Denver plan, it was clear that the same sort of traffic jams would occur and that the Seattle plan to evacuate in three days was just plain unrealistic. I reported this back to the group that asked me to make the evaluation. In July 1982, Seattle Mayor Charles Royer withdrew Seattle from planning for nuclear war evacuation. He called the FEMA plans to evacuate the population of Seattle to east of the Cascades in the event of a nuclear attack “virtually useless” and stated that Seattle should not “lend credence to the dangerous idea that a nuclear war is a manageable emergency.” FEMA threatened to withdraw some Federal funding that was supposed to be provided to Seattle if Seattle withdrew, but Seattle pulled out anyway.
The Federal Government has been engaged in a controversial debate over a revision of the “Protective Action Guide,” an EPA document that was written to provide guidelines on what levels of radiation should trigger protective measures such as evacuations. Activists are claiming that the proposed manual references other agencies numbers which are thousands of time higher than previous EPA guidelines. I will be writing a post about the new EPA manual in the near future but, for the time being, I just want to point out that I hope that if a nuclear evacuation anywhere in the U.S. is ever triggered, the plan is much better than the plan that FEMA came up with for Seattle in 1980.
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Geiger Readings for April 10, 2013
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on April 10, 2013
Ambient office = .116 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .109 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain = .107 microsieverts per hour
Bartlett pear from local grocery store = .117 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .088 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .070 microsieverts per hour
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Geiger Readings for April 10, 2013
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on April 10, 2013
Ambient office = .116 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .109 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain = .107 microsieverts per hour
Bartlett pear from local grocery store = .117 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .088 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .070 microsieverts per hour
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U.S. Nuclear Regulator Problems – Palisades and Jaczko
I have leveled complaints against the U.S. nuclear regulatory process in many previous blog posts. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has the contradictory mandate to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy in the U.S. and also to regulate the nuclear industry in the U.S. These goals are bound to fall into conflict. There have been numerous charges that the NRC has been too lenient with violation of regulations. It has been said that the industry that the NRC is supposed to regulate has too much influence over it, a situation known as “regulatory capture.” One subject that I have not covered has been direct attempts by members of the U.S. Government to interfere with the proper function of the NRC.
In May of 2012, the chairman of the NRC, Gregory Jaczko, announced that he was stepping down. His resignation was seen as a victory by the pro-nuclear lobby in Congress and on the Commission. They had been fighting for years to get Jaczko to quit as Chairman. The U.S. Senate Majority Leader called a Democrat who led the campaign to oust Jaczko a “treacherous, miserable liar!”
A few weeks after his announcement, Jaczko visited the Palisades Power Plant on Lake Michigan. During the visit, there was a significant leak of potentially radioactive water into the control room at the plant but no mention of the leak was made to the visiting Jaczko. Two weeks after the visit, the plant was shut down so that the leak could be repaired. When Jaczko found out that the leak was occurring while he visited the plant, he asked the NRC Office of Investigation to find out why no one mentioned the leak during his visit.
NRC Commissioner William Ostendorff was opposed to the investigation. Witnesses state that Ostendorff shouted at the top NRC investigator, Cheryl McCrary, that any such investigation would be a waste of agency resources and that it should be stopped. The incident was reported to the NRC Office of the Inspector General by a witness to the exchange. This internal struggle between members of the U.S. Government who favor industry deregulation and those who believe that the nuclear industry need more scrutiny is a reflection of a more general debate on the proper role of government oversight of corporations.
I have a blog post that dealt with some of the problems at the Palisades plant. Activists have been calling for the plant to be closed as a danger to public safety. The Palisades plant has a defender in the U.S. Congress in the person of a Michigan Republican Representative named Fred Upton who is the Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House of Representatives. Upton is called the number one cheerleader for the nuclear power industry. His claim that the waste piling up on the shore of Lake Michigan at the Palisades plant is stable and safe is simply not true.
The situation at the Palisades plant is a microcosm of the U.S. nuclear power situation. On one side, you have activists who are rightly worried about the aging fleet of U.S. reactors and all the nuclear waste that is piling up. On the other side, you have industry boosters backed by billions of dollars who assure everyone that nuclear energy is safe and great for fighting climate change. This is a good debate to have and everyone should have their opinion heard. However, there are forces at work inside the U.S. Government who are trying to subvert the democratic process and cover up serious problems at U.S. nuclear power plants.
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Geiger Readings for April 9, 2013
Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on April 9, 2013
Ambient office = .093 microsieverts per hour
Ambient outside = .112 microsieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain = .116 microsieverts per hour
Banana from local grocery store = .090 microsieverts per hour
Tap water = .116 microsieverts per hour
Filtered water = .081 microsieverts per hour
