Letter submitted to Mersea Courier

Emergency planners fail to address Strood issue ?

After a series of exercises, including the simulation of plane crash at the Bradwell site, the Government's National Emergency Planning Liason Group (NEPLG) concluded in a recent report that the Detailed Emergency Planning Zones (DEPZ), in effect the evacuation zones, around new nuclear power stations should be extended to 4 kilometres, which in the context of Bradwell would include West Mersea. It was acknowledged that although new nuclear power plants were inherently safer by advances in design, new risks had since emerged such as risk of terrorist attack, flooding due to climate change and the storage of spent fuel on site that may increase the overall level of risk to nearby communities.

The evacuation plan for the Detailed Emergency Planning Zones (DEPZ) around the Sizewell nuclear site requires that the transient poulation of summer visitors, such as those at caravan and camp sites, without the shelter of permanent accomodation are evacuated first while local residents are required take shelter inside their own homes and await instruction from the emergency planner on local radio. In the context of Mersea Island, with such a large additional summer population of perhaps 5,000 tourists, a similar plan would require that 7,500 residents remained in their homes while tourists are evacuated first. If such a plan was adopted here the local population would appear to be at increased risk.

In the context of global warming one scenario is of a tidal surge causing flooding at any new nuclear power plant which by definition would occur at the same time as the tide covered the road off the Island. It is anticipated with the effects of global warming that sea levels will rise and tidal storm surges will become higher and more frequent. Irrespective of the evacuation of the Island, which would appear impossible under such a scenario, it is unlikely that the emergency services would be able to cope effectively with both an incident at the power station and the flooding caused by a tidal surge. The scale of the flooding along the coastline in 1953, before the existing power station was built, supports this assertion.

In addition the record to date of the nuclear industry in releasing accurate and timely information to the public about incidents is poor, with the extent of some incidents only becoming known many days or even months later. This has caused distrust amongst the public of information about incidents given by emergency planners at the time they occurred. It is unlikely that in practice people would remain in their homes even if told to do so but would "self-evacuate" in panic, not believing any official reassurances given to them about the nature and risks of any incident and fearing that the risks from the incident were being understated and also that they may be later trapped on the Island by the tide if it was rising.

The protest on the Strood organised by BANNG against the building of a new nuclear power station and radioactive waste store at Bradwell was justified as to date this community has received no reassurances from planners on these issues.

Ian Clarke