The Japan Nuclear Incident: An Overview
Part 2
Hello. I’m Rick Hasselberg with the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission’s Office of Nuclear
Security and Incident Response. In the spring
of 2011, the NRC’s incident response organization
sprang into action in response to the devastating
earthquake and tsunami in Japan. 
In this video I will provide a brief overview
of the NRC’s response activities following
the earthquake.
In the early hours of March 11th, 2011, members
of the NRC Executive Team were already receiving
updates from our Headquarters Operations Officers
about the devastation caused by the magnitude
9.0 earthquake that occurred off the east
coast of Japan – and of tsunami warnings
that were being issued across the Pacific
Basin. With U.S. territories at risk, and
with several NRC licensees within the warning
area, the NRC was placed in its “Monitoring”
response mode.
Our Region IV office in Arlington, Texas,
assumed the lead for monitoring the readiness
of U.S. nuclear power plants within the warning
area.
NRC Headquarters, in Rockville, Maryland,
concentrated on the international aspects
of the event, including coordinating assistance
that might be requested by Japan. 
The NRC Executive Team, led by the NRC Chairman
Gregory Jaczko, oversaw all aspects of the
NRC’s response. The Chairman was actively
engaged, briefing the White House, addressing
the news media, testifying before Congress,
and conducting news media interviews.
The NRC maintained a 24/7 response posture
for several weeks. The Executive Team of
senior officials held regular discussions
with the heads of other federal agencies and
with nuclear industry executives – and it
received regular status updates from the response
teams assessing and analyzing the incident,
including from the NRC’s team in Japan.
The NRC’s Reactor Safety Team had very little
plant-specific information to work with. But
a modified team of plant technology experts,
core cooling and accident assessment analysts,
seismologists, and communicators was assembled
and did what it could to analyze what was
happening in Japan. Based on what we were
hearing on the news, the situation was very
grim. 
Since the Fukushima units were similar in
design to several U.S. facilities, the Reactor
Safety Team prepared as much information as
possible on those units. It also worked with
GE-Hitachi, the Department of Energy, the
Office of Naval Reactors, the Electric Power
Research Institute, the Nuclear Energy Institute,
and several utility companies that operate
similar reactors to share information and
assessments.
While the Reactor Safety Team was doing its
best to assess facility damage, the NRC’s
Protective Measures Team, comprised of experts
in radiation dose assessment and protective
actions, had an even tougher assignment. That
team had to try to estimate the possible health
and safety consequences of the event and recommend
appropriate U.S. government actions. 
The Protective Measures Team worked with the
National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center
to obtain hourly weather conditions and forecasts
for the Fukushima area. Using a similar U.S.
plant as a surrogate, the team programmed
its Radiological Assessment System for Consequence
Analysis (or RASCAL) code to model various
core damage scenarios, based on different
levels of core and containment damage. Over
time, as conditions worsened and more units
became involved, the Protective Measures Team
updated its modeling parameters to represent
increased degrees of core damage and greater
radiation release rates.
The NRC’s Liaison Team interfaced with organizations
and officials from around the world, sharing
and receiving information to assist in the
response efforts. The Liaison Team communicated
with international contacts, U.S. government
agencies, the White House, Congress, and response
officials from dozens of states and territorial
governments. As you might imagine, the telephones
stayed very busy.  Liaison Team members were
dispatched to several off-site locations,
including Japan.  Additionally, several federal
agencies assigned special representatives
to the NRC. 
Learning from the national response to the
Gulf Oil Spill in 2010, the Liaison Team served
as the focal point of a government-industry
consortium, a group of government agencies
and private companies that banded together
to provide a consolidated set of U.S. recommendations,
capabilities, and physical resources to support
Japan. 
The NRC’s Public Affairs staff kept the
news media and the public informed by issuing
more than a dozen press releases and fact
sheets, and writing numerous blog posts. The
Public Affairs staff also prepared and regularly
updated talking points so the NRC’s Chairman
and senior executives would have factual,
up-to-date information for interviews and
testimony.
On the evening of March 11th, two NRC experts
were sent to Tokyo.  By March 14th, nine
more NRC staff members had arrived. These
individuals served as the first wave of an
NRC support team. Their primary mission was
to assist the U.S. Ambassador with technical
advice to ensure the safety of U.S. citizens
in Japan. The team also assisted the Japanese
regulatory authority and supported other U.S.
assistance efforts. Some members of the NRC
Japan Team also traveled to the Fukushima
site to see the damage firsthand.
While the NRC no longer maintains around the
clock staffing in our Operations Center in
response to this event, the NRC remains very
active in supporting international coordination
through organizations such as the International
Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Energy
Agency.
The NRC is also focused on making sure that
the agency and its licensees learn as much
as possible through this incident to promote
enhanced safety in U.S. nuclear facilities
Some of our earliest actions were to direct
NRC resident inspectors and our regional inspection
staff to conduct special inspections to evaluate
each licensee’s readiness to respond to
a station blackout, flooding, and other extreme
events such as those that occurred in Japan. 
We also requested that the nuclear power facilities
to certify, under oath, that they have workable
mitigative capabilities and strategies for
dealing with these extreme events.
The Commission also established a senior-level
task force to review NRC processes and regulations
to determine whether the agency should make
improvements to our regulatory system.  A
short-term review has already been completed,
addressing near-term operational and regulatory
issues. And a longer term review will follow. 
The international response to the disaster
at Fukushima Daiichi will go on for many,
many years and the NRC will continue to assist
with that response as needed. As with other
life changing events, all of us should make
every effort to understand and never forget
the lessons that were learned at such a tragic
cost.
