Mapping Nuclear Fallout One Year After Fukushima

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

March 5, 2012 | 1:55 PM

Stan Honda / Getty Images

Cooling towers from the Limerick Generating Station, a nuclear power plant in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, are seen from a nearby neighborhood.

The Natural Resources Defense Council has a new mapping tool that charts potential deadly nuclear fallout at U.S. plants in the wake of an accident. The NRDC released the map a week before the first anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which was touched off by an earthquake and tsunami that damaged the Japanese plant. Matthew McKinzie, NRDC’s senior scientist writes in his blog that U.S. plants are at risk of a similar meltdown.

“Unfortunately, the chance of a severe accident at a U.S. nuclear power plant is a very real threat – and it wouldn’t take an earthquake and tsunami to trigger it. The fundamental cause of the disaster in Japan was that the reactors lost both primary and back-up power sources. More common weather patterns – like flooding, tornadoes and hurricanes – could have the same impact and in fact five nuclear power plants in the U.S. underwent emergency shutdowns due to such extreme weather events in 2011 as flagged in NRDC’s map.”

The NRDC plotted the fallout using weather patterns recorded during March, 2011. Five U.S. nuclear reactors lost power in 2011. The map plots potential radiation plumes from Pennsylvania’s four nuclear power plants. According to the NRDC, the fallout from Delaware’s Salem nuclear plant would also reach the state. After Fukushima, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission formed a task force, held public hearings, and gave congressional testimony on proposed safety upgrades at nuclear plants. NRDC’s Jordan Weaver details the actions taken, and not taken, by the industry and the NRC since Fukushima.
For an insider’s look at how workers at the plant responded, and the resulting impact of the meltdown, check out Frontline’s piece on the Fukushima nuclear disaster.