Dr Ian Fairlie has just produced one of the most thought provoking articles which I have read in a long while.
Evacuations after Severe Nuclear Accidents
In it he examines: –
– The experience of evacuations during the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
– Whether lengthy evacuations from large cities are feasible?
&
– Some emergency plans for evacuations in North America.
Having read it I started to think about just what might happen if a major accident were to occur again at Windscale, which is now know as Sellafield.
Evacuation Routes
One of the presumptions which the planners make in their thinking is that everything will be fine, or up and running on the day.
Could it be that they presume that there are no blocked or impassible roads across Cumbria, track work on the railways, or the kind of flooding which occurred in the lake district during 2015 ?
The only railway line out of the area runs along the West Cumbrian coast, which includes a station at Sellafield.
So any railway evacuation from the area will be to the south via Barrow to Lancaster, or to the north and Carlisle via Whitehaven.
These are also the route which are used to take nukiller waste flasks to Sellafield. So any evacuation should include just what to do about these flasks, as they are not designed for long term storage of irradiated fuel rods.
Moving the sick.
Any evacuation from the area will entail moving patients in Whitehaven up to Carlisle or further afield.
Does the NHS have the capacity to move all these patients in a hurry, and are there enough ambulances to transport them ?
Given all the publicity about how hospital corridors are been used for patients waiting beds to be freed up before they are admitted, then we might land up with a shortage of hospital corridors to put them in.
Then there are all of the individuals who will need to be evacuated from Care Homes or Hospices in the region.
I wonder just where they might be sent ?
I’m left wondering just how many evacuation plans take in to accounts any of the above?
Yes it’s all questions, questions, and more questions, but that’s the easy part.
Getting answers and finding the right solutions is going to take some time.