Rainbow Relief

Rainbow Relief

We stay until you smile again

US natural disasters more frequent and more severe

• The WMO has published a report of disasters and their economic cost, as well as death toll by region. For the US, the majority of climate related disasters were storms, with Hurricane Katrina in 2005 ranked # 7 storm for loss of life (1,833) and ranked #1 for economic damage $146.89 billion.

• The top 10 disasters for economic loss were all in the US, starting in 1992 with Hurricane Andrew and ending in 2012 with both Hurricane Sandy ($50 billion) and drought which cost $20 billion.

The elderly and the young are the most unprepared for disaster

• Save the Children has issued its 2014 Disaster Report which notes 54% of all American families have been affected by some type of disaster.

• Parents are anxious about these events but not active in preparing for them. 66% of the parents in the survey said they are at least somewhat concerned about natural disasters.

• 21 states do not require schools or child care providers to have a basic emergency plan.

• 40% of the parents in the survey do not have an emergency plan and 49% said they don’t feel very prepared.

What would we do as a society if a truly major regional disaster struck that caused our electricity to go out for more than a week?

• Emergency Management magazine feature article* “Only 100 emergency call centers out of more than 6000 across the country have capability of receiving and responding to text message.”

• 80% of Americans use their cell phone to text. Now US wireless carriers have agreed to support text to 911 so more centers will be adopting this technology but it is expensive.

• The FCC has estimated upgrading all call centers will cost $3 billion. • While government officials are focused on updating their

communication technology, it seems less time and attention is given to the poor, the elderly, the handicap, in sum anybody without access to the internet. Is any organization working to alleviate this gap between the wealthy, electronically gifted and those without internet access?

*by Tod Newcombe, senior Editor issued August 1, 2014

University of South Carolina public opinion survey of evacuation compliance 2011

• Nearly two-thirds (61%) of the sample is unlikely to evacuate in advance of a Category 1 or Category 2 hurricane. This is worrisome as more than half of the residents sampled lived in either a Category 1 or Category 2 surge zone. This varies regionally along our coast with residents in the southern counties (Beaufort, Colleton, Jasper) more likely to evacuate for such storms (32%), than those in the central region (Berkeley, Charleston, Dorchester) (18%), or northern region (Georgetown, Horry) (12%).

• For major hurricanes (defined as Category 3, 4, or 5), the anticipated evacuation behavior is better; 77% of the coastal residents in the survey stating they would leave.

• In addition to residents living in designated hurricane evacuation zones, the survey included people living outside of these formally-defined areas. These so-called shadow evacuations (people living outside of designated evacuation zones, but who participate in evacuations) are a concern. For a major hurricane, the number of shadow zone evacuees could be significant increasing the coastal evacuating population by 100,000 thereby complicating emergency management, extending evacuation times, and potentially putting more people in harm’s way.

• At least a third of the coastal residents are uncertain or incorrect about their location in or out of storm surge or FEMA-flood zone.

National Academy of Sciences Report recommendations – Fukushima lessons learned

• Until now, U.S. safety regulations have been based on ensuring plants are designed to withstand certain specified failures or abnormal events, or “design-basis-events”-- such as equipment failures, loss of power, and inability to cool the reactor core -- that could impair critical safety functions. However, four decades of analysis and experience have demonstrated that reactor core-damage risks are dominated by "beyond-design-basis events,” the report says.

• The Fukushima Daiichi, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl accidents were all initiated by beyond-design-basis events. The committee found that current approaches for regulating nuclear plant safety, which have been based traditionally on deterministic concepts such as the design-basis accident, are clearly inadequate for preventing core-melt accidents and mitigating their consequences. A more complete application of modern risk-assessment principles in licensing and regulation could help address this inadequacy and enhance the overall safety of all nuclear plants, present and future.

More NAS recommendations

• The Fukushima Daiichi accident raised the question of whether offsite emergency preparedness in the U.S. would be challenged if a similar-scale event -- involving several concurrent disasters -- occurred here. The committee lacked time and resources to perform an in-depth examination of U.S. preparedness for severe nuclear accidents.

• The report recommends that the nuclear industry and organizations with emergency management responsibilities assess their preparedness for severe nuclear accidents associated with offsite regional-scale disasters.

• Emergency response plans, including plans for communicating with affected populations, should be revised or supplemented to ensure that there are scalable and effective strategies, well-trained personnel, and adequate resources for responding to long-duration accident/disaster scenarios. In addition, industry and emergency management organizations should assess the balance of protective actions -- such as evacuation, sheltering-in-place, and potassium iodide distribution -- for affected offsite populations and revise the guidelines as appropriate. Particular attention should be given to protective actions for children, those who are ill, and the elderly and their caregivers; long-term social, psychological, and economic impacts of sheltering-in-place, evacuation, and/or relocation; and decision making for resettlement of evacuated populations in areas that were contaminated by radioactive material.

Four states in South Nuclear Infrastructure is 20% of US

• Total of 20 nuclear power plants, in Georgia, North and South Carolina and Virginia, all with spent fuel pools and some with additional dry cask storage, and six fuel cycle facilities. Conservative population estimates of 15.5 million people living near a nuclear facility (there may be some overlap).

• There are only 3-4 major evacuation routes Hwy 95 north or south; Hwy 40, 26 or 77 north.

• Total spent fuel within 200 miles of southern coast is approximately 13,130 MT as of December 2013 (nei.org) total spent nuclear fuel in the country is 71,780MT.

• All together these figures represent approximately 20% of the US nuclear complex, plus one of the major nuclear sites of the US Dept of Energy – the Savannah River Site and the associated MOX (mixed uranium and plutonium) fuel fabrication facility.

Upgrades to Emergency planning required

• Most of these plants were built in the 1970s and 1980s – now populations have grown in size and proximity to these facilities.

• Many facilities if required (as the NAS recommends) would have to educate the public in multiple states about their operations.

• In case of a regional accident it is likely that citizens in large cities remote from the coast would evacuate despite orders to shelter in place, complicating the transportation planning for those people who do need to leave the area.

Nuclear Executives focused on Yucca Mountain – the spent fuel repository

• For the past 20 years most public information campaigns of the industry have been focused on technical merits of long term storage of spent fuel.

• Obama administration decision to cancel funding (despite the fund coming from utility/ratepayer payments) has frozen utility planning.

• A public education campaign focused on radiation and protective actions the public can take is unlikely to come from the industry.

New research is needed

• Cultural anthropology, moral psychology and neuroscientists have all made major strides in understanding how the brain processes emotions – especially fear and anxiety.

• It is possible to combine these new fields with traditional risk communication techniques to help the public consider the benefits of nuclear energy along with the risks.

Funding is being sought

• Call or e-mail to request a copy of the proposed rainbow relief project and/or the associate documentary Nuclear Reaction.

• We accept all donations no matter how big or small. Linda L Gunter in North Carolina

• e-mail llgunter@yahoo.com or

• tel 336 879 8149