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"Keyhold" evacuation diagram
Lately,
there has been some media interest in our updated emergency
preparedness regulation, finalized last year. We welcome this interest
and the opportunity to explain our most recent changes.
The
NRC, working closely with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA),
started the process to revise the EP rule after a top-to-bottom review
in 2005 noted areas for improvement. The rulemaking also formalized
security orders U.S. plants put in place after the events of 9/11.
The
NRC discussed the proposed changes at public conferences in 2007 and
2008, and the agency issued draft rule language in early 2008.
Additional public meetings on the draft language in 2008 were followed
by a proposed rule published in the Federal Register for public comment
in May 2009. The NRC took public input on the proposed rule for five
months, holding a dozen public meetings and gathering several hundred
comments. The NRC greatly appreciated and benefited from the feedback we
received. Staff from the NRC and FEMA
briefed the Commission on Dec. 8, 2009, and
May 3, 2011, both of which involved a panel of external stakeholders, regarding the proposed rule.
The Commission approved the
final rule on Aug. 30, 2011, and we issued a
press release at
that time. The release noted aspects of the rule, including new
requirements for back-up means of alerting the public and for updating
evacuation time estimates when population changes warrant. The NRC held
additional public meetings around the country after the rule was
published; more than 550 people participated.
Under
the new rule, plants are still required to hold an NRC-graded exercise
every two years, but the new rule requires the plants to have an
eight-year planning cycle during which they had to insert new scenarios
that, among other things, adds a level of uncertainty to the exercises.
The
NRC learned an important lesson in its EP review – plant personnel and
state and local officials had become so used to scenarios requiring
evacuation they made decisions about evacuations long before available
information would support their actions. The new EP rule addresses that
by requiring some exercise scenarios to damage a plant without releasing
radioactive material – this will force exercise participants to more
carefully consider their decisions instead of assuming evacuations were
the best option.
The
new rule also requires that an exercise scenario must include one that
has a security component in addition to a safety issue. (These EP
exercises based on a security scenario are not to be confused with the
ongoing security-based
force-on-force drills the NRC also requires at every plant.)
Another
change in the rule involves a revision to evacuation procedures.
Extensive research shows health risks from an accident would be greatest
within two miles of a plant, so guidance for the new rule focuses on
that close-in population. Getting the “two-mile” people relocated first
keeps evacuation routes potentially less clogged.
Other research,
announced earlier this year, provides additional insight into how
successful EP procedures, combined with the expected timing of a reactor
accident, can keep the public safe.
The NRC continues to examine
EP issues in
light of last year’s accident at Fukushima Dai-ichi. The agency has
asked U.S. nuclear power plants to analyze their staffing needs for
events involving multiple reactors at a given site. The NRC is also in
the early stages of rulemaking to integrate and strengthen several
categories of nuclear plant emergency procedures. The agency also
continues to examine information from Fukushima to see what else can be
learned regarding the size of evacuation planning zones and the use of
potassium iodide.
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