Staffing Downsizing and Off-site Emergencies

[Ragreen1@aol.com]

On 96-04-06 at 1721 EST Sandy Perle sent a  message about the number of
persons required for Commercial Nuclear Generating Stations Emergency
Manning. I think that it would be appropriate to tell Radsafers about another
possibility. The company I work for has two Nuclear generating stations that
are separated by about 140 miles. The Corporate Headquarters is roughly
midway between. 

There is no corporate Health Physics, Radiation Protection, Dosimetry or
Emergency Planning staff. Each of the Nuclear sites has a Radiation
Protection Staff made up of professionals, technicians, deconners, and
clerical personnel totalling less than 70.
In addition, each site has an Emergency Planning group of less than 10
people, this group has responsibilities for drills, drill scenarios, and
maintaining the E-plan duty rosters.

All emergency plan positions  in OSC (Operations Support Center here), the
Technical Support Center (TSC) and the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) are
manned by a duty roster. Each Individual position has at least three
qualified individuals assigned.  Engineering positions are filled by plant
engineers, Chemistry positions by plant chemistry personnel, etc. During your
week as the primary responder you must be within 30 minute travel time of the
site. All of the emergency centers are on site except the Public Relations
people. The secondary responders must be within 12 hours of the site.The
people on these rosters are the same people, described above,manning the
routine plant operating positions.

We too perform off-site dose calculations, my particular position on the
roster; and I like to think the computer model is sophisticated as I was one
of the people writing it. But the point is, the program is written, the two
engineering assistant type people entering the data during a drill or real
emergency don't really ever need to re-write this sophisticated program on
the spot. Similarly, we have long had maps of the area, the routes and
locations for any off-site teams have been preplanned for each of 16 down
wind directions (we have a rather large body of water covering about a third
of the surrounding area. The teams can be be almost any of the plant
personnel, trained sufficiently to collect specific items of data. The data
can then be transmitted back for entry into the sophisticated program.

As to determining if the population is at risk, shouldn't we look at it as
determining if the population is likely to exceed a regulatory limit.  What
is the effect of a TEDE corresponding to a Thyroid Dose of one (1) rad again?
 What is the effect of 1 rad to the thyroid?  After all we must recommend
evacuation at 5 rem thyroid and are STRONGLY
encouraged to evacuate at one rem ( EPA-400 if I remember right).

The really sad thing about these drills, aside from using up a tremendous
amount of person days of time, is that they are self defeating. In order to
excercise the off-site agencies, all drills have to give the off-site
agencies something to do. This means somehow getting a plume off-site;
therefore all drills wind up as practice for total disaster.  This has the
following consequence    The utility spends about a quarter of a million
dollars of the rate payers money to hold a drill to convince the local
governments that ANY incident at the local nuke site is going to require a
major upheaval, an evacuation, and people running around looking for
CONTAMINATION. Then between drills we wonder why the local public thinks the
local nuke plant is unsafe.

Back to the primary purpose of this little speech. Properly utilized, all of
our commitments can be met with an organization which does not include any
corporate (separate from the sites) Health Physics staff. Elimination of some
of the neat to have stuff and/or window dressing is painful at first, but it
should not be put into terms which imply that any downsizing is going to have
immediate and horrible consequences for the public. To my mind that is not
the way preserve, and perhaps expand, the nuclear generation option for this
country.

The usual disclaimers apply. The opinions expressed are my own, who else
would admit to them ? These opinions have not been checked with or approved
by anyone.

Regis A. Greenwood, C H P
ragreen1@ix.netcom.com
          OR
ragreen1@aol.com