A Government Accountability Office study released Wednesday suggested that the government should consider a larger geographic area when forecasting the number of evacuations during an emergency at a nuclear plant.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency focus their planning for radiological emergencies on areas within 10 miles of nuclear plants, as the NRC has determined the immediate public health risks outside these areas would be low in such an event. The GAO study, ordered by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and other senators, evaluated this policy and concluded the agencies should also consider the potential for gridlock and so-called shadow evacuations outside these zones.
"If the public outside the zone evacuates unnecessarily at a greater rate than expected, these 'shadow evacuations' would put additional traffic on roadways, possibly delaying the evacuation of the public inside the emergency planning zone and potentially increasing the risk to public health and safety. However, because neither NRC nor FEMA have examined public awareness outside of the 10-mile emergency planning zone, they do not know how the public outside this zone will respond," the report read. "Without estimates of evacuation times based on more solid understanding of public awareness, licensees and
NRC and FEMA cannot be confident about the reliability of their (evacuation time) estimates."
In response, the Nuclear Energy Institute noted in a statement that, "NRC still considers the 10-mile and 50-mile emergency planning zones to be adequate, based on health evidence from the Three Mile Island and Fukushima accidents and the findings of recent NRC studies on the potential consequences of severe accidents at U.S. facilities." The trade group also emphasized that public outreach near the plants is only one of multiple layers of emergency planning at nuclear facilities.