Feds: Public health risks from major nuclear accident 'very small'

The public health consequences of a major accident at one of the country’s 104 nuclear reactors would be “very small,” federal regulators said Wednesday.

Reactor core damage at a nuclear power plant from an earthquake, fire or flood would likely cause few, if any, immediate deaths and a “very, very small” increase in cancer-related deaths over the long term, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a new report.

The report — known as the State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequence Analyses (SOARCA) research study — modeled the consequences to public health of severe accidents at nuclear power plants in Surry, Va., and Delta, Pa. The results can be applied generally to other nuclear plants, the commission said.

The findings come nearly a year after an earthquake and resulting tsunami led to a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. In the aftermath of the disaster, federal regulators are mulling a series of new procedures and regulations aimed at ensuring the safety of U.S. plants.

Current emergency response procedures and rules “can stop an accident, slow it down or reduce its impact before it can affect the public,” according to the commission. If response measures fail, the effects of a major accident “progress more slowly and release much less radioactive material” than earlier studies estimated, the study says.

Because work on the report began well before the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, it does not analyze the incident. But the report includes an appendix outlining the “many similarities and differences” between the Fukushima reactors and those at the Peach Bottom plant in Delta, Pa.

The report says comparisons with the Japanese disaster are difficult because “there are significant gaps in information and uncertainties regarding what occurred in the Fukushima reactors.”