U.S. remains woefully unprepared.

• Position: Nuclear Disasters

One year after the Fukushima reactor crisis in Japan, no meaningful progress has been achieved in improving the ability of first responders and medical professionals to react to a disaster on a similar scale in the U.S., according to a report from Physicians for Social Responsibility, Washington, D.C.

"Existing U.S. emergency preparedness drills do not consider prolonged station blackouts, severe regional natural disasters, or multi reactor events. The U.S. has not developed the capability to inform and direct emergency personnel and the public in real time during an unfolding severe event, regarding actual radiation levels, plume directions, food and water safety, timely distribution of stable potassium iodide, or the rationale of sheltering-in-place advisories to the public," the report declares.

Ira Helfand, North American vice president, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, adds, "While there is an urgent need to improve our preparedness for a major nuclear accident, we also have to understand that there is no planning possible for some of the worst consequences of a nuclear disaster.

"Recent press reports indicate that the Japanese government feared during the first chaotic days of the accident that it would be necessary to evacuate Tokyo. No one has ever evacuated tens of millions of people, and it probably cannot be done in the time frame that would be required, but that is exactly what we would have to do here in the U.S. in the event of a major accident at Indian Point [in Peekskill, N.Y.].

"The evacuation of a 50-mile zone around Indian Point would involve 17,000,000 people. The evacuation zones around several other plants in the U.S. contain more than 5,000,000 people. In the event of a large-scale disaster, most of these people will not be evacuated and they will be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation which will, in fact, kill many of them."

The PSR report points out that:

* Nearly all spent nuclear fuel ever created by commercial reactors, approximately 72,000 tons, has accumulated and still is stored at U.S. reactor stations. Some 75% of all spent fuel still is in wet cooling pools that...