The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a plan for any kind of disaster. It starts with getting to the scene as quickly as possible.

So when an earthquake and tsunami hit northern Japan and devastated parts of the country on March 11, NRC’s first two experts were on the ground in Japan within 48 hours, ready to help. Many more emergency responders followed them.

The NRC’s initial report by an expert panel on the disaster was released on July 12. It outlines the lessons learned and how the experience could help the NRC in any future disaster of any magnitude – big or small, in the US or overseas.

It concluded that nuclear power plants in the US need better protections for rare, catastrophic events.

But it also reflected a discipline to discern new insights to be learned from one disaster and apply them to ongoing disaster management planning.

As such, the NRC’s report offers a model for other federal agencies dealing with a catastrophe and needing a rapid response. That includes agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Institutes of Health, the Homeland Security Department, the Defense Department, the Federal Aviation Administration and many more.

The authors of the report noted that after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Commission established new security requirements on the basis of adequate protection. “These new requirements did not result from any immediate or imminent threat to NRC-licensed facilities, but rather from new insights regarding potential security events.”

Similarly, they concluded, the Fukushima Dai-ichi accident provides “new insights regarding low-likelihood, high-consequence events that warrant enhancements to defense-in-depth” strategies, including redefining what levels of protection are regarded as adequate.

Martin J. Virgilio, the deputy Executive Director for the NRC’s Reactor and Preparedness Programs, is responsible for the NRC’s incident response.

In shorthand, he says, “We would dispatch someone immediately to get out to the site. If the incident is at a nuclear plant or fuel sites, we have people there,” Virgilio says.

It’s a lesson they learned and have cultivated since 1979 in the aftermath of the Three Mile Island nuclear catastrophe in Pennsylvania. And it is refined all the time.

“We have direct links to nuke plants so we are getting data back immediately,” Virgilio says. “We are better able to do oversite and might dispatch a large team to region, and take command at headquarters.

To make sure their plans work like clockwork, the NRC practices a mock emergency exercise at least once every quarter, knows who the players are at related federal agencies and develops relationships with other feds whose expertise it might need in a disaster response.

Effective communications is an essential component of dealing with any disaster, he says.
It wasn’t a problem in Japan, he says, because translators were available at all levels. But it is something that must remain front and center for every agency responding to a disaster.

Since Japan, there have been a couple of nuclear alerts at two nuclear plants on the Missouri River where the same game plan was executed.

Looking back at the Japan disaster, Virgilio says, the NRC process and game rules still makes it “get better every day.” The NRC team leader is still on the ground in Japan, and the regulatory agency continues to provide guidance to the Japanese.