I had always thought that should a major nuclear disaster occur, something like Fukashima, that the response would be in the hands of the president. Not so.
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal points out that the sole authority for the response to an emergency lies with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. What measures to take to control the situation will come from the NRC chairman, currently Gregory Jaczko. As for evacuation orders, those have to come from state and local officials, not the president.
So what can we expect?
If history is any guide, their first response will be “there is no risk to the public.” This is what they always say whenever anything goes wrong at a nuclear plant. As for accurate information, forget it. It took three years before the true details of what happened at Three Mile Island became public.
During this ongoing crisis in Japan, information has been equally hard to come by. The mainstream news media has gone on to more important things – like Schwarzeneger’s love child and the royal wedding.
You might recall that the news media was scrupulous in not calling what was going on a “meltdown.” Now that the media is no longer reporting anything about this, the nuclear agency in Japan last week conceded that a meltdown had indeed occurred at one of the reactors. You might also recall that they kept saying how this wasn’t as bad as Chernobyl, but they eventually had to concede it’s pretty darn close.
Among the other things that have gone largely unreported – Congress has decided to cut funding for safety inspections and measures at nuclear power plants, as part of the emergency budget adopted to avoid a government shutdown.
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