Escape plan lacks nuclear scenario

Jul 31 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Patrick Cassidy Cape Cod Times, Hyannis, Mass.


The newest version of an emergency plan for Cape motorists to escape a hurricane does little to reassure activists concerned about the lack of a local plan if there were an accident at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth.

"We're a population at risk but we've been basically ignored," Diane Turco, a Harwich resident and Pilgrim opponent, said Monday.

The updated 15-page plan released Monday is primarily for a hurricane making landfall on the Cape or Islands and is almost identical to previous versions. The greatest difference is that earlier plans included a trigger to close the Cape Cod Canal's two bridges in the event of 70 mph sustained winds. Now, other factors in addition to wind speed will be used to make the decision to close the bridges, including weather forecast, time of day, traffic and road conditions. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers controls the three bridges that span the canal, including the railroad bridge.

The plan, emergency officials say, is less about trying to evacuate the Cape before a storm than making sure people can make it home or to a shelter.

Turco, other anti-nuclear power activists and local emergency planners have been pushing officials at the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency to come up with a traffic plan for the Cape if a problem occurs at the 40-year-old nuclear plant owned by Entergy Nuclear.

In June, MEMA representatives met with Turco and other officials, including George Baker, the Mashpee fire chief and chairman of the Cape Cod Regional Emergency Planning Committee.

"It was a very legitimate question," MEMA spokesman Peter Judge said.

Although the newest version of the Cape Cod Emergency Traffic Plan could partially address an issue at the plant, state officials are working on a plan specific to traffic leaving the Cape because of an incident at Pilgrim, Judge said.

Congestion from traffic leaving the Cape over the Sagamore Bridge combined with drivers fleeing a 10-mile evacuation area around the plant was considered in an evacuation time estimate prepared 10 years ago.

Entergy is working on an update to the evacuation time estimate, company spokeswoman Carol Wightman said.

But Turco and others have questioned whether that information is adequate or accurate.

That estimate more or less calls for shutting down the Sagamore Bridge if there is an accident at the plant, Turco said.

State officials have denied that the bridge would automatically be closed.

"At this point there would not be any formal evacuation of the Cape," Judge said.

Parts of the Pilgrim evacuation strategy and the new Cape traffic plan, however, could be used to steer traffic to the Bourne Bridge in order to avoid major backups on the other side of the Sagamore Bridge in case of an incident at Pilgrim, he said.

The plans, however, do not take into account the Cape's unique geography or overlap where they should, Baker said.

"I think the state heard us loud and clear. What they do with that information we don't know yet," Baker said.

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Entergy officials said they were responsible for emergency response on site at the plant and that the off-site response falls to local emergency officials, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and MEMA.

The NRC requires detailed emergency evacuation plans for an area within a 10-mile radius of nuclear plants although it recommended evacuating American citizens within 50 miles of the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in Japan after last year's nuclear disaster there.

For now, the NRC does not plan to extend the evacuation zone around U.S. plants but might consider it given enough reason, NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said.

NRC officials will defer to FEMA officials regarding a Cape-specific traffic plan for Pilgrim, Sheehan said.

Cape emergency management officials are primarily concerned with providing shelter on the Cape during a storm, said Michael Whalen, Dennis police chief and vice chairman of the Cape Cod Regional Emergency Planning Committee.

There are six regional shelters the planning committee and the American Red Cross can activate, as well as a 3,000-person shelter on the Massachusetts Military Reservation, Whalen said. The majority of people are unlikely to leave the Cape until it's too late, he said.

"People just won't leave 72 hours out especially when 72 hours out people don't know where it's going to land," he said.

 

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