UK Generic Nuclear Emergency Plan

Generic UK Emergency Plan

The successful response to an emergency at a nuclear site will depend on the team work of a wide range of people working under difficult conditions. This requires people with the right skills, attitudes and training being in the right place at the right time and suitably equipped. This requires planning, training and practice.

Equipping the responders requires that suitable facilities are available in which to store that equipment and in which to use it. Coordinating the efforts of a large number of people working in different locations, on-site and off-site, requires communications technologies and, as importantly, agreed and practiced ways of working.

It is important to keep unnecessary people out of the danger zones and to minimise the spread of radioactive contamination. Most emergency plans therefore have a facility that marks the border between the incident scene and the rest of the site and allows control to be maintained of the people passing this boundary. This goes by various names including Forward Control Point, Access Control Point and Incident Control Point.

Most sites have a person authorised to make rapid decisions and a process to enhance that person’s understanding of the situation and its ramifications. This is generally a room that can be seen as a communications hub and decision support centre. This is often called the Emergency Control Centre.

All sites are concerned with the security of their site and the security of the nuclear material contained upon the site. They will have a security function tasked with ensuring this security and based in an on-site facility.

Many sites will have facilities that control plant in normal operation and, in an emergency, these may form part of the response tasked with returning the plant to a safe condition. Complex sites may have a number of these control rooms controlling different processes. Reactor sites tend to have one Central Control Room controlling all of the reactors on site.

Sites will have safe areas where the non-involved people on site can respond to a roll call to ensure that everyone is accounted for and then wait in relative safety for more information. These are Site Muster Points.

The Local Council will have a facility to co-ordinate the strategic response of the external organisations such as the emergency services, the local and national government and various expert groups. This is the Strategic Coordination Centre.

The Company may have off-site facilities that can offer assistance to the affected site. These may include storage compounds some distance from site from which material aid can be mobilised or other sites that offer expertise in support of the affected site and, in some cases, take control of all off-site aspects of the event management.

The Government and regulators have a number of crisis support centres including DECC’s Nuclear Emergency Briefing Room (NEBR), the Cabinet Office’s Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBR) and ONR’s Redgrave Court Incident Suite (RCIS). These facilities are all connected by a communications web that keeps information and instructions flowing.

Forward Control Point

The Forward Control Point is a concept that is listed in a number of plans, sometimes with a slightly different role.

The Cabinet Office Lexicon of UK Civil Protection Terminology relates Forward Control Point with Forward Command Post which it defines Any service's command and control facility nearest the scene of the incident, responsible for immediate direction, deployment and security. This might be either an Operational / Bronze or Tactical / Silver facility depending on the circumstances of the incident.

It is thus the last point of control passed by responders on their way to complete a task in the affected area. The purpose of the Forward Control Point is to:

• Provide a check on the equipment of the responders. Do they have the appropriate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), including Respiratory Protective Equipment (RPE)? Do they have the tools to complete their task? Are they adequately briefed about what they are being asked to achieve and the hazards they may meet? Do they have appropriate dosimetry (to record their radiation dose) and instrumentation (to measure radiological and other hazards alone the way)?
• Provide contamination control. Personnel coming out of the area will be monitored at the FCP and if found to be contaminated will either be decontaminated on the spot or, if that is not practical, sent to a decontamination facility in a manner that reduces contamination spread (they might put on addition overshoes or coveralls to minimise the spread of contamination).
• Provide additional first aid facilities if required. Injured personnel being bought out of the affected area may be held at the FCP for urgent first aid should it be needed. Ambulances might go this far forward to provide aid and to transport the casualties onwards.
• Provide Command, Control and Communication capabilities – there is often someone in control of the FCP who is aware of the teams working in the area, aware of the tasks to be completed and the hazards present and in communication with the Access Control Point to keep them appraised of the situation and to discuss resource requirements.

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The FCP may be a prearranged and equipped location or it may be based on portable equipment and set up where the FCP Controller thinks most fit under the circumstances. It is usually equipped with communications facilities, tape barriers to demarcate areas, contamination control barriers with all the equipment associated with them, and with Control Boards to capture the situation and actions underway. It would be staffed by a trained controller and health physics monitors and maybe have support staff to manage communications, situation recording and first aid.

The Forward Conrol Point would be in radio and/or telephone contact with the ACP. Situational Information would pass both ways. The ACP may request more resource in order to meet its mandate. If the communications are by radio then other responders may listen in to improve their situational awareness but generally the adopted protocol is that all tasking of the FCP is passed through the ACP.

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Access Control Point

The Cabinet Office Lexicon of UK Civil Protection Terminology defines the Scene Access Control Point as Controlled point through which essential personnel may gain access through the inner cordon .

On Nuclear licensed Sites the Access Control Point (ACP) provides a facility where responders can be briefed, equiped and deployed to the scene and where they can be monitored, decontaminated, if required, and debriefed on their return. The ACP would keep records of every entry into the area and, in particular, a visible record of all the teams currently in the area, their radio call signs, expected return time and mission.

The ACP is usually a dedicated facility at operating sites with a full scope alternative facility at different location on site as a contingency against the primary facility being untenable on the day of need.

The ACP will be in communication with the FCP, to help ensure the safety of personnel deployed forward of the ACP, and with level of Command and Control above it, to ensure common situational understanding and common aims. For sites with operating reactors the next level of Control tends to come from the Main or Central Control Room from which the reactors are operated. For sites on which the reactors are shutdown being defuelled the reactor control rooms are often removed from the Command and Control chains. Defuelled sites often do not have Control Rooms at all. In these cases the ACP communicates upwards to the Emergency Control Centre (ECC).

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Control Room

The site may have a room from which processes, such as nuclear reactors or chemical processes, are controlled in normal operation. These Control Rooms would be expected to manage the processes in most fault conditions although often alternative facilities do exist if required.

The Control Room is normally lead by the Shift Manager (Sometimes Shift Charge Engineer or Shift Leader). This role is responsible for the safe operation of the plant and, in the absence of a Duty Emergency Controller, would leads the site's response to an alert.

Within the Control Room there are a Control Room Supervisor and a number of supporting technicions, controlling the process In the event of a nuclear reactor fault the Control Room Staff are divided into those responding to the fault and those maintaining safe operation or shutdown of the unaffected reactor (AGR sites have two reactors per site. Sizewell B (PWR) has one).

In the absence of a Duty Emergency Controller the Shift Manager/Shift Leader is responsible for considering any untoward events and determining if a Declaration of Off-site Nuclear Emergency or Site Incident is required and deploying personnel as required.

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Emergency Control Centre

The strategic control of the site in crisis is managed from the Emergency Control Centre. This will be occupied by the Emergency Controller and support staff providing expertise in the technical situation, the on-site health physics issues and the off-site issues associate with the protection of the public. They generally manage the situation with a process known as Command and Control in which an individual is recognised as having the authority to make key decisions.

The facility will be well equipped with communications and information display tools with the intent of reaching an understanding of the situation and a clear view about how it should be tackled.

The ECC decides how resources should be allocated and tasks the units below it to complete those actions necessary to bring the event to a close. It also acts as the main communication hub feeding information off-site.

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Site Muster Point

There will usually be a number of people on site who have no involvement in the incident or the response to it. These people must be kept safe and out of the way of the responders. Both aims are met to a certain extend by moving the uninvolved people to a pre-agreed muster point where the danger is expected to be lower and where they can be kept briefed on the situation. For nuclear events, involving the release of radioactivity or hot gases, these muster points tend to be in buildings (often the site canteen as it is the only room big enough to hold a large fraction of the site population in reasonable comfort). For fires the initial muster points tend to be outdoors.

For reactor faults, for which the taking of stable iodine is a recognised countermeasure, the muster points hold supplies of stable iodine tablets and the water required to take them. They also contain the equipment needed to manage a roll call to check that no one is missing.

There is a general rule that there should be no eating or drinking during a nuclear emergency because of concern about increasing internal radiation dose by consuming contaminated food or water or by enhancing the transfer of radioactive contamination from the hands to the mouth. This guidance can be relaxed in the case of medical needs or disproportionate discomfort.

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Site Security Control

All sites are concerned with the security of their site and the security of the nuclear material contained upon the site. They will have a security function tasked with ensuring this security and based in an on-site facility.

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Company Off-site Support Centres

Many sites have off-site support centres that provide a range of services to a site in crisis. These provide a number of services.

Several of the nuclear licensed sites have facilities off-site that store equipment that may be of use if the site suffers a severe accident. These have been significantly improved since the Fukushima incident and some now provide the sort of equipment that might be needed to clear debris from roads and key areas of site, and provide equipment required to supply emergency cooling to reactors and cooling ponds in extremis. (It is worth noting that post-Fukushima the ability of sites to survive inundation and severe weather has been improved by, for example, moving emergency pumps, water suppies and cooling systems higher and increasing stocks of tools on site). (see here)

Another form of off-site centre is one that provides coordination of technical expertise to support those on site trying to understand and fix the problem. An example of this is the Central Emergency Support Centre (CESC) used by EDF and Magnox Limited. This facility, which would be activated in the event of a Site Incident or Off-site Nuclear Emergency, accommodates The CESC Controller with significant authority to make decisions on behalf of the Company and supported by two sets of technical experts. One set are reactor physicists and related trades who understand the site’s safety case and are in direct contact with the site. They seek to understand the situation and provide both advice and material aid towards fixing the problems. The other set of experts are health physicists concerned with understanding the release and spread of radioactivity who help to determine the Company’s countermeasure advice for the protection of the public.

All nuclear licensed sites within the UK have the ability to provide technical and health physics advice of this nature but they are not all housed in a headquarters building remote from the affected site as in the CESC. The CESC is a solution for a multi-site Company that is less appropriate for a single site Company.

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Off-site Survey

The off-site survey provides the ability to monitor the radioactive material as it spreads across the country. It is composed of a number of components.

All sites have some form of perimeter monitoring system which consists of permanently detectors around the edge of the site designed to give an alarm if they detect unusually high levels of radiation in the area. Many of these are simple detectors measuring the gamma dose rate but, some sites, have more sophisticated detectors that can distinguish different radioisotopes or can measure particulate activity in air. The system installed being dependent upon the site’s safety case.

Sites also have mobile facilities mounted on vehicles which can be sent out into the countryside to take measurements in agreed location and to radio the results back. There are usually 2 or more of these at each site and there is an expectation that if one site had a serious off-site release then some of the vehicle from other sites would mobilise to provide additional resource.

RIMNET is a government system of deployed detectors around the UK. Originally set up in the aftermath of Chernobyl it provides a record of the radiation dose-rates at set points across the UK.

An important component of the off-site survey are the scientists who collect and analyse the results. These measurements are compared to modelled values based on source term estimates and atmospheric dispersion, a process that supports the determination of countermeasure advice.

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Strategic Coordination Centre

The Strategic Coordination Centre (SCC) (sometimes called "Gold Command" or "Local Emergency Centre" in older documents) is a standard part of the local response to a major event of any nature. The role of the SCC in the response to an off-site nuclear emergency is outlined in Chapter 7 of the NEPLG Guidelines where it states that it should provide the means whereby:

(a) relevant local and national agencies can receive full and authoritative information about the emergency;
(b) advice can be provided to those charged with local executive actions to protect the public; and
(c) information about the emergency can be formulated for the media and the public, and
(d) co-ordinated action can be taken to protect the public.

The decision making element at the SCC is the Strategic Coordination Group (SCG) which is usually chaired by a senior policeman and is attended by the local Emergency Services, the local authority, health bodies, the Company that owns the site, the regulators and technical advisors. The facility provides for information exchange and for discussions about countermeasures and advice to protect the public.

The SCG gets technical advice from the Science and Technology Advice Cell (STAC) .

Associated with the SCC will be a Media Briefing Centre (ref)

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Nuclear Emergency Briefing Room

The Nuclear Emergency Briefing Room (NEBR) is part of the DECC response to a nuclear emergency. Its role is to support COBR and the govenment's response to the emergency. It acts as a information node for government and coordinates DECC's response. It would also inform various international organisations and countries with whom we have information exchange agreements.

The NEBR Incident Controller would be a senior official from DECC.

The NEBR is located in London for briefing central government and co-ordinating any national response to a large civil nuclear event in England or Wales.

The Scottish Government Resilience Room (SGoRR) is a more general purpose crisis centre for the Scottish Government (more akin to COBR). it will brief the Scottish parliament and co-ordinate the Scottish response to a large civil event in Scotland.

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Redgrave Court Incident Suite

The Redgrave Court Incident Suite is in the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) Headquarters in Bootle.

Lead by the RCIS Director, this facility will coordinate the ONR response to an event, collate information and provide briefings to government organisations and the Government Technical Advisor (GTA).

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Media Briefing Centre

The Media Briefing Centre provides a facility from which the media can be briefed. Part of the role of the SCC is to coordinate media messages to ensure the clarity, consistency and accuracy of the information being provided to the media as these factors can have a strong impact on the public perception of the situation and the ability of the authorities to manage it.

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Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms (COBR)

The Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms (COBR) play a role in the Government's crisis management process.

It is a facility (usually in Westminster) from which the central response is activated, monitored and co-ordinated and which provides a focal point for the Government’s response and an authoritative source of advice for local responders.

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