Nuclear facilities near you and how your gov informs you about them?

With everything going on in Japan a lot of questions about nuclear power are raised around the world. I'm sure that every single person has asked himself what he/she would do if such a disaster was threatening your area.
Governments are going through the emergency scenario's again, some are re-informing the public on what to do in case a nuclear disaster strikes.

I live less then 17 km from a nuclear power plant, in Belgium... and ofcourse I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Earlier this week I received notification from my town that a free box of radiation pills is available for my familly to pick up at the nearest pharmacy, with that came a letter explaining how and when the pills should be taken (ONLY when the government tells you to!)

My government, shameless, aired this commercial on national tv, which is in my opinion very disrespectfull towards the people in Japan.


It would be funny if it wasn't aired during a disaster....
the commercial explains in dutch what people should do in case of a disaster ( stay indoors, keep windows and doors closed, leave the kids at school, don't make unnececary use of your phone, listen to radio or tv and follow instructions,...). Think we all know that by now.

So I have two questions for you all:

1) what's happening in your town regarding nuclear power plants, safety measures, informing the public,etc...?

2) What would you do should a nuclear disaster strike close to you?

Personally, I'd go agains all guidelines the government gives me and jump in my car the moment I hear the sirens go off... and drive as far as I can! (I always been very aware of the sirens, know when they are testing them and I know when it's for real, know the different kind of sirens and their meanings...etc)
Is that a stupid reaction?
Are the guidelines the correct way to go?
Is it worth it to sit at home with windows closed and wait it out? Or is that more a means to avoid chaos on the streets?
How far do you live from the nearest nuclear facility and what would you do or are you doing?


(pls move topic if I posted in the wrong forum)

1) what's happening in your town regarding nuclear power plants, safety measures, informing the public,etc...? 2) What would you do should a nuclear disaster strike close to you?

1.) not enough
2.) I'm in Las Vegas about 100 miles from Yucca mountain...I'm so screwed if anything happens and the fact that I felt a small quake from Black Mountain last year does nothing to reassure me. That and I'm sure the water is already messed up (could be the paranoid side of me) I do try to keep my eye on Nellis AFB activity. What I would do...well housing construction here is utterly horrible so I'd either a.) try to get away from windows and head to somewhere safe...ish or b.) try to head east as fast as possible.

I live above 80 miles as the crow flies from Sellafield which doesn't exactly have the best safety reputation. No information about safety procedures in the UK unless you go and look for them. I expect that is much the same in other countries.

There are around 19 operational plants in the UK, with another 26 that have been shut down. Although like I say I live a considerable distance from Sellafield in particular, due to the fact that the UK is such a small area, information should be more readily available. I suspect it is amongst 'locals.'

This crisis in Japan has allowed the fear of nuclear energy to emerge in a big way once more, and in relation to the UK it is incredibly unlikely that a disaster like Japan's will ever occur on British soil. However like I say the UK is a relatively small area, so it wouldn't take much to cause serious damage.

Perhaps if any good comes from this tragedy, we will see massive investment in Thorium 232 research.

OK I am officially a broken record.

Edit to add: Also 60 miles from Heysham.

reply to post by Big Raging Loner


I've read the recent posts about Sellafield and that was the first time I heard of that place, I wouldn't want to live anywhere near it.
I agree that it's unlikely that something as big as the japan disaster will happen around these parts, we have no big earthquakes and no big natural disasters... but never say never...

Don't you have some kind of backup plan incase, let's say something happens at Sellafield? Or at least a plan in your mind about what to do?
It suprises me that a country as the UK is not informing the public...

people around here used to say things like, "if something happens at the nuclear plant, we'd all be death right away", but recent events in japan show that if you act immediately there is time to get away from the worst, It suprised me that a lot of Japanese people stayed put untill they where told to evacuate.
Maybe it's just me who is always expecting the worst, lol... I would run with the first sign of trouble, better to be safe then sorry

reply to post by GypsK

They removed the town's warning sirens about twenty years ago. And even though we lived about 400km downwind from a plant, the government said nothing after many people complained of sudden loss of hair on the same day. So with this experience I'm not impressed by their sense of reponsibility to us.

I now live about 300 km from a plant, and I admit that I have not asked anyone about this. But I will! Thanks for making me think about this. I bet they'll tell me they rely on television announcements. Maybe they use Twitter now .

I always thought I`d just drive away somewhere north. I have some supplies in the trunk of my car. But with the price of gas, maybe I should just hide under my bed.

reply to post by kittendaydreamer


If your 100 miles away from Yucca mountain and something does happen, your not 'screwed' if you act immediately... like I said in my post above, the recent japan events do show that you have a bit of time to get out of the area. Do you have a backup plan in case something happens? Or would you really stay put?

reply to post by aboutface


um wait... the day they removed the warnings in your town people started loosing their hair??? That sounds bizar... Did something happen at the nearest plant? Or where you all kept in the unknown guessing about the cause?
400 km is a good distance, I would go 200 at least but probably not further then that in case of emergency (to start with)

I have DC Cook with 2 reactors about 10 miles south west and Palasades with 1 reactor about 15 miles north. We have sires test once a month but you can barely hear them where I'm at. We get a yearly calandar from cook with instructions on want to do if something happens. They have large warehouses full of supplies about 20 miles south and one about 40 miles north. I know a lot of the plant workers so I get a lot of info. Both places are going to add 2 more reactors so that'll be thousands more high paying jobs and lots more tax dollars

]reply to post by GypsK

um wait... the day they removed the warnings in your town people started loosing their hair??? That sounds bizar... Did something happen at the nearest plant? Or where you all kept in the unknown guessing about the cause?
[/quote

Oh I see. No, the two events were on different dates. But the hair loss all happened at once to everyone. And yes, we were left guessing. 400 km is not far because the winds and weather patterns follow along a river from it to me.

I'm living right next to a reactor here in Germany, Hamburg (25km distance) and there are nearly zero informatons about it. We've never got any infos about what to do in an emergency (just those ppl living in 1km distance), no infos about the current status (just that it's working or offline at the moment), no radiation levels provided by the company or anything else. It's one of the oldest reactors here in Germany with more than enough bad news about hushed up problems in the past. If there ever happened to be a big problem the ppl in Hamburg and around (>2 million) have no plan how to evacuate or protect themselfs.

Originally posted by GypsK
How far do you live from the nearest nuclear facility and what would you do or are you doing?

I just looked it up before I read your thread, I didn't know the exact distance.

So the first thing to do is learn the location/distance of the nearest facility/facilities.

I'm about 80km as a bird flies from a nuclear plant in the US, neither upwind nor downwind, sort of "sidewind" if that's a word (if not I just made it up).

The biggest problem is, there are few evacuation routes from here so in an evacuation there's not enough roads to get all the people out in a timely fashion in an emergency, it will take days. There's not really much I can do about that, except be thankful that the 80km distance will buy a little extra time.

I'm thinking of getting some iodide tablets but it's not a big priority.

I think we probably got more radiation from Chernobyl than we will from Japan or even a local accident. Chernobyl was bad, reactors in the US and Japan aren't built the same way so I doubt the exposure will reach Chernobyl levels in better reactors, though that could be wishful thinking.

double post

We just have to assume that industry will always fail so we will always end up with worse case scenario's. This is chaos theory, kind of. It's bound to happen! So the safest energy technology is the most viable, not the cheapest! Just assume that the worst case will always happen.

Now having said what I think is important (read above), I lived near a light water reactor for years. I was afraid of it. But in the past 5 years I've leanred more about nuclear power and since then haven't been afraid of it because it's mostly safe. Coal is killing more people than nuclear. It's more polluting too. There's a double standard going on. Radioactive things get all the attention while coal plants keep pumping out 100 to 1 more radioactive emissions than a nuke plant. Both nuke and coal plants can be dangerous. We can do it safely, but my thinking is that chaos theory says we shouldn't mess with complex systems lightly. So we should always assume we'll bungle it and things won't go well. In that case the safer energy production is better.

We should think in terms of 500 years not 50. We keep putting the costs on future generations rather than paying for it now. This is mostly because companies don't want to bare the weight of the true costs so they ignore it and lucky for them the rest of society ignores it as well. To be honest, it's not their fault. I think it's because our average lifespan is too low. If we lived 150 years on average, things like sustainability and pollution would be more important.

What boggles my mind is why nuclear scares people more than coal. Coal killed at least 220,000 people in the US between 1995-2005. That's more people than the total death count for chernobyl. Coal has been far more deadly over its lifetime in the energy industry. We have nuke plants that're virtually 100% safe. But here again... chaos theory says we shouldn't be so prideful. We should assume failure, and so my gut is concentrated solar and natural gas are probably safer than coal or nuclear. We should weight our formula much more towards what's safest than what's cheapest. But how to convince the bean counters that this is best?

Have a look here:
A Solar Grand Plan

Ray Kurzweil (spelling) predicts solar power will be competitively priced soon.

Here:
Solar Power to Rule in 20 Years, Futurists Say

Originally posted by jonnywhite
I lived near a light water reactor for years. I was afraid of it. But in the past 5 years I've leanred more about nuclear power and since then haven't been afraid of it because it's mostly safe. Coal is killing more people than nuclear. It's more polluting too.

Knowledge is power, as you've demonstrated yourself.

The reason people have an irrational fear of nuclear plants and radiation is because they don't understand them. Most of the world isn't building nuclear plants as close to fault lines as Japan did, so in that basis I think most of them are much safer, with the exception of anything of Chernobyl-style construction that might still be operating somewhere.

Coal plants have problems with not just radiation, but also heavy metals like mercury, lead, arsenic, and other toxins.

But they don't have a meltdown mode.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

Originally posted by jonnywhite
I lived near a light water reactor for years. I was afraid of it. But in the past 5 years I've leanred more about nuclear power and since then haven't been afraid of it because it's mostly safe. Coal is killing more people than nuclear. It's more polluting too.

Knowledge is power, as you've demonstrated yourself.

The reason people have an irrational fear of nuclear plants and radiation is because they don't understand them. Most of the world isn't building nuclear plants as close to fault lines as Japan did, so in that basis I think most of them are much safer, with the exception of anything of Chernobyl-style construction that might still be operating somewhere.

Coal plants have problems with not just radiation, but also heavy metals like mercury, lead, arsenic, and other toxins.

But they don't have a meltdown mode.

This is the problem though. I know nuke plants are safe. I know that even the older ones are mostly safe. Japan shouldn't have been given the MOX because this plant is on a fricken fault and did thye evne think about a tsumani (looks like they didn't). But this is the blame game. The industry, whether it's energy or not, will always cut corners to make profit. This will always happen. We will always blame. And you know what? We will always have these disasters because people will continue to cut corners. So the logical conclusion is to go the safest route and use energy production technologies that're safer not cheaper. Thus, when people do make selfish mistakes, we lose less and furthermore there're less random people across the world dying from emissions both during normal and catastrophic events. One of hte problems with coal is that the people who die from it are random people all over the country. We can't track down the particle that killed them but we know that coal puts out X particles and we know that these particles cause cancers and a range of other problems so we can estimate the death count. But the problem is that we can never say a coal power plant killed a certain person. Not having to worry about this as much because we're using something safer would make us more honest.

I'm not saying nuclear can't be safe. Ther'es abundant evidence they can be. The newer designs as I said before are virtually 100% safe, they even require no electricity to cool (can use gravity). I'd welcome a newer design reactor in my county if one was put on the table. But I think what's best for us all is to assume that industry will always cheat and not follow the rules. They'll always abuse things. So we'll always have disasters and failures. Better to fail with a broken solar panel than to fail with a nuke plant or a coal industry. Safety gives us security when we fail.

Maybe I'm wrong about this. Maybe we just need more oversight, more watchdogs. More regulation. Maybe. So maybe this was just a failure of government in its duty to ensure fair (and safe) industrial practice. I don't know. I just think that it's best for us all if we always assume failure. If we always assume failure then inherent safety becomes a larger concern.

Perhaps there's no safe way to produce X energy? Maybe. But while a solar panel can be 'economical' at 50 watts for a homeowner, a nuke plant isn't. I can't put a nuke plant in my backyard to produce 50 watts. I have to spend billions to build the thing and it requires experts from that field. It's a large endeavour by comparison. Whereas, I myself could build a solar heater - no experts needed. If I fail, I can start over. No big radiation leaks. So maybe the key here is decentralising the grid as opposed to using one thing over another?

I guess what I'm asking is can we rank energy production technologies in terms of safety? So lets assume we want to produce X energy with Y technology. Then lets graph the input with changing values over time. Then compare the different technologies to see what the results are. This should, for the sake of simplicity, assume worst case scenarios. Assume that the user won't follow the rules and will break all of em. This is in the spirit of chaos theory.

I was watching the news last night and there was a map showing U.S. nuclear facilities. I had no idea there is one in north Alabama. Judging from the map it looks like about 2 hours from Memphis, TN area. I've lived in this area over 20 years and had no idea.

I don't live near a nuclear plant unfortunately, so I am unfamiliar with the evacuation procedures etc...

I would probably get a fine cloth, make it damp, cover my mouth / nose with it.

Close all windows, and lock all doors.

Then go on the computer, see what's going on.

If it's bad, then I'd hit the road.

reply to post by GypsK


Depends on the situation like where I am (at work, out and about, at home awake, at home asleep) if I find out early enough I would leave...maybe I could convince my husband to finally take a honeymoon (the eyes were at my husband, not at you)
If I found out late, or was unable to leave then it depends where I am, if I'm driving, I would get my cat & husband...I might head to a school, college, library or germy germy hospital, someplace that had a room with thick walls and no windows. I have a cheap bag of supplies in my car & at home. If I'm at home....well the construction is poor, the walls are thin, there are windows in every room...I live about 4 min from a library and 5 min from a school so I'd probably head one of those places.

all the answers seem verry different and from all the replies I've read, the majority doesn't seem to worry or think much about such a scenario hitting close to home.

What I haven't read here is if you would follow your governments instructions or go your own way? I mean, for a forum where I must have read a thousend times 'don't trust the gov and the msm'.... well, you all know what I mean... would you trust them enough to believe they know what is best in case of an emergency?

I was going to start a thread with this but appears it would fit perfect into this thread. CNN has a good link in which you just enter your zip code:

CNN-How close is your home to a nuke plant? Enter Zip