Steve Mischke is one of state government’s resident inspectors, assigned full time to Clinton power plant by the Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA). He says he hasn’t seen the post-Fukushima inspection report but he did assist the NRC with parts of the most recent inspection. Mischke says he’s confident the plant is safe.
He says the inspections went “above and beyond normal routine inspection activities.” He says it’s accurate that parts of Clinton’s fire protection system are not designed for the “beyond design basis events” the inspections were addressing. “However, it is very robust and a number of backup fire pumps are available, and additionally the station does have a very large, portable diesel pump, in case the others aren’t operating.”
He adds that Clinton operators “prioritize their work here based on safety significance of the items” and that operators “get them repaired within a good period of time.”
Past preparations In November 2009, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) ran a test drill in DeWitt County to see how well local and state emergency managers could respond to a crisis at Clinton’s nuclear power plant.
During the drill, the state-led “unified area command” directed some hypothetical evacuees to travel through a hypothetical radioactive plume to get to the only reception center the emergency management team had opened. In an identical real-life situation, evacuees’ health and safety would have been compromised, as they would have unneces sarily been exposed to radioactive particles.
The Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA) says evacuation mistakes like the one it made during the Clinton drill are not common. “Since that time I’m sure we’ve considered that,” says Dave Smith, head of IEMA disaster assistance and preparedness, who remembers the Clinton drill. “Typically we open all of the evacuation centers.” Clinton has three – one each in Decatur, Champaign and Normal – all located about 25 miles away from the power plant.
IEMA representatives add that the condensed time frame of each emergency drill makes errors more likely. In a real-time situation, the same responses would most likely take place over the course of 24 to 48 hours, whereas in a drill they all occur within four or five hours.
Though the state’s single reception center decision was the only part of the drill labeled by FEMA as a “deficiency,” the county was also cited because “key personnel with leadership roles did not consistently demonstrate effective direction and control of the overall response effort for which they were responsible.”
During the exercise, all of the emergency management decision-makers left the emergency operations center for more than 30 minutes to brief the media, leaving no one in charge and no one designated to pass along any messages should the situation change. Though, during the exercise, the wind direction changed, possibly requiring more evacuations, the update went unnoticed and even when the decision-makers returned no discussion of the matter took place.
At the time, Teresa Hall was involved with the drill as a part of the American Red Cross. “Those were all administrative kinds of decisions made that day. Whatever it says in that report is a thorough response from FEMA,” she told Illinois Times last week.
She’s quick to note that the DeWitt
County Emergency Services and Disaster Agency’s coordinator during that drill resigned a few months later. Now, appointed just two weeks ago, Hall herself is the local ESDA coordinator. “We are well aware of the problems that existed in the past, and we will do our very best to make sure all aspects of the exercise that are put forth to us are covered exactly as they should be,” Hall says, confident that she and the area’s emergency workers are prepared for a nuclear disaster. The next FEMA drill, her first as ESDA coordinator, will take place this November, she says.
State of safety Joe Klinger, IEMA’s assistant director, says Illinois hosts one of the best state nuclear safety divisions in the country. He’s particularly proud of IEMA’s resident inspectors, including Clinton’s Mischke, who live near and work within a designated Illinois nuclear power plant.
“We’ve got our own eyes and ears. … I think we’re uniquely situated to make sure that if there is a safety concern that’s not being addressed, we’ll point it out [to the NRC],” Klinger says.
He also touts Illinois’ nuclear power plant monitoring system, which transmits 1,000 measurements and equipment statuses from each power plant back to the state.
Kay Foster, head of the bureau of nuclear facility safety within IEMA’s Division of Nuclear Safety, says having all of that information at her fingertips has kept her from moving to other states’ nuclear safety divisions. The Florida native moved to Illinois to begin her career in 1986. “Nobody else has the program like we do. I couldn’t leave here. I just felt good about what we were doing and what kind of information we have. I knew that if I went to another state I’d be totally frustrated without it,” Foster says.