4/15/15 New Jersey Herald: County Plans for Nuclear Dangers
Posted: Apr 15, 2015 11:50 PM EDT
Updated: Apr 15, 2015 11:50 PM EDT
Disaster Accountability Project Most of Sussex County is within a 50-mile radius of the Indian Point nuclear plant, located in the town of Buchanan, N.Y., in Westchester County, at the center of the blue oval.
Disaster Accountability Project Most of Sussex County is within a 50-mile radius of the Indian Point nuclear plant, located in the town of Buchanan, N.Y., in Westchester County, at the center of the blue oval.
By BRUCE A. SCRUTON
bscruton@njherald.com
NEWTON — For more than 50 years at least one nuclear power plant has operated on the banks of the Hudson River at Indian Point — just 50 miles from Newton.
The distance and terrain between here and there made the Entergy Nuclear Northeast complex a faint thought, at least until the past couple of years.
“We’re looking at it a lot closer now,” said Cpl. Mark Vogel, deputy emergency management coordinator for the Sussex County Sheriff’s Office. “In fact, as recently at March 27, we (county officials) were at a conference for ingestion pathway training,” a complex-sounding title for how local officials should handle fallout should there be an issue at Indian Point.
In the U.S., there is a requirement for emergency management plans, which include public education, notification and evacuation scenarios, for localities within a 10-mile radius of a nuclear facility.
While there is no formal proposal, the federal Government Accounting Office has recommended that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission make such plans mandatory within a 50-mile radius.
On Wednesday, the Disaster Accountability Project released its own report detailing its findings that there has been little planning done in a ring between 10 and 50 miles.
Of prime concern in the GAO’s report is the lack of even basic education for the general population within that zone, which raises the spectre of panic and doesn’t take into account what the report calls “shadow evacuations.”
Vogel said his office is working with county health officials to have information packages posted shortly on the Sussex County website.
One set will include guidelines for farmers and others who grow foodstuffs, which include livestock, and the effects of fallout.
The second set will be for residents and offer guidelines for individual protection, including where to go for information should there be an incident.
He said his office is also working closely with the state Office of Emergency Management on coordination of evacuations of populations farther east and therefore closer to Indian Point, located in the town of Buchanan in Westchester County.
“A lot of those evacuations could be coming through here,” Vogel said.
The Disaster Accountability Project report said an estimated 20 million people live within 50 miles of the Entergy plants.
Vogel said the county is also looking at its current inventory of monitoring equipment and notification systems.
“We do have limited equipment,” he said, and added that at this point, there are no federal or state grant programs to help purchase any equipment.
Ben Smilowitz, executive director of the Disaster Accountability Project, said the report “should serve as a wake-up call to local communities.”
The increased awareness was brought on by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that severely damaged the Japanese Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.
At Indian Point, the earliest reactor, which went into operation in 1962, was shut down in the 1970s.
Operating licenses for the two newer reactors, built in 1974 and 1976, respectively, are being considered for 25-year license renewals.
Bruce A. Scruton can also be contacted on Twitter: @brucescrutonNJH or by phone: 973-383-1224