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| LOCAL NEWS | THE MERCURY

SUNDAY, MARCH 13, 2016

The cover the 2016 report by the Disaster Accountability

Project on preparedness for evacuation from a nuclear
accident at Limerick outside the required 10-mile
evacuation zone.

Travel
FROM PAGE 1

miles away from the plant

to avoid harm.
However, current regulations in the U.S. require emergency planning
zones for only a 10-mile
radius around the nations
roughly 100 operating nuclear plants including
Limerick.
Outside the 10-mile
zones, local governments
are not required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or Federal Emergency
Management Agency to
plan for radiological emergency evacuations, or to educate the general public on
what to do in the event of a
radiological emergency.
Exelon Nuclears 2012
Evacuation Time Estimate
study indicates there are
279,016 people living within
the 10-mile emergency planning zone around the Limerick plant.
When the circle is expanded to the 50-mile ra-

dius recommended in Japan, that number swells

to more than eight million
people, according to a 2010
study by the natural Resources Defense Council.
The Disaster Accountability Projects latest report looked at how many
counties with towns outside the 10-mile emergency
zone provided any kind of
emergency information
and more specifically information about a radiological
incident at Limerick.
The short answer is very
few.
Only two of the 15 counties between 10 and 50 miles
of the Limerick plant contacted by DAP Chester
and Bucks counties provided any kind of information to the residents outside
the 10-mile zone regarding
a radiological emergency
and none of them provided
any official information
specific to an accident at
the Limerick plant.
State and local authorities should not wait for the
imposition of federal regulatory mandates to imple-

DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA FILE PHOTO

Exelon Nuclears Limerick Generating Station.

ment this planning into
state and local preparedness efforts, the report concluded.
L i mer ic k G ener at ing Station has a robust
emergency plan to protect the health and safety
of the public, including
those living outside the
10-mile Emergency Planning Zone, David Tillman, senior communications manager for Exelon
Nuclear, wrote in an email
response to a query.
The station meets or exceeds all emergency planning regulations, which
are dictated by the federal
government, said Tillman.
Emergency plans are constantly evolving, regularly
practiced and tested by
FEMA and the NRC.
The DAP report expands
on a 2013 effort by the federal Government Accountability Office, requested
by U.S. Sen. Robert Casey,
which considered a phenomenon called shadow
evacuations.
Working under the likelihood that an incident at the

Limerick plant would spur

people who live beyond the
10-mile radius to also attempt to flee, the GAO studied how many were likely to
join the exodus and the impact that would have on
current evacuation plans
closer to the plant.
The GAO found that
the NRC has never studied likely responses outside the 10-mile zone and
thus could not be confident
that its estimates (20 percent) for shadow evacuations outside the zone are
accurate enough to serve as
a basis for emergency planning.
But in 2014, the NRC rejected the call to expand the
emergency planning zone
from 10 to 25 miles.
The NRC is denying the
petition because the agency
concludes that the current
size of Emergency Planning Zones is appropriate
for existing reactors and
because emergency plans
will provide an adequate
level of protection of the
public health and safety in
the event of an accident at a

nuclear power plant, NRC

spokesman Neil Sheehan
said at the time.
Asked for a response to
the DAP report, Sheehan
responded Friday with an
email which read, in part:
FEMA has not changed
its assessment that it continues to have reasonable
assurance that the plans
for the Limerick nuclear
power plant will be effective if needed.
Sheehan added that
those plans are put to the
test once every two years
during a full-scale emergency exercise, with the
NRC assessing on-site response and FEMA evaluating off-site response. The
most recent such exercise
for Limerick was Nov. 17.
We did not identify any concerns based on our review
of the exercise.
Beyond questions of
evacuations, the NRC has
implemented changes at
plants around the country
Limerick included as a
result of what it calls lessons learned from Fukushima.

Among the Fukushimarelated requirements at

Limerick, which has the
same GE boiling water nuclear reactors as the Japanese plant, are something
called hardened wet well
vents, designed to prevent the build-up of hydrogen gas which caused
an explosion at the Japanese plant.
The NRC has also required that Exelon obtain
and be prepared to deploy
additional back-up pumps
and generators to keep
the plant operating safely
should power and back-up
power be lost.
Last April, the NRC
granted Exelons request
to extend the deadline for
the upgrades, giving Exelon
until the spring re-fueling
shut-down of 2017 for the
vents to be installed in the
Unit 2 generator; and until
the spring re-fueling shutdown of 2018 for the Unit
1 generator vents to be installed.
Sheehan said last week
that Exelon is on target to
meet those deadlines.