Nuclear security

Nuclear Plant Emergency Preparedness: Failure to Communicate

Nuclear plant owners are required to develop plans for responding to accidents that describe actions to be taken by workers onsite as well as describing communications to local, state, and federal organizations so they can taken actions offsite. Among other things, the emergency plans detail when to activate the sirens that warn people in the community about an accident at the plant.

Key elements in the emergency plans are Emergency Action Levels (EALs). The EALs are not new aspects—they have been around since at least November 1975, or more than three years before the March 1979 accident at Three Mile Island.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has four emergency classification levels: Unusual Event, Alert, Site Area Emergency, and General Emergency in increasing order of severity. TheEALs are pre-determined, site-specific, observable thresholds for conditions that place a plant into an emergency classification. EALs are things such as instrument readings, equipment status indications, analytical results, and entries into emergency procedures that enable workers to determine when emergency declarations are necessary.