• Question: What would be the best thing to do if there was an accident at a nuclear power station nearby?

    Asked by anon-201901 to Sophia, Sarah, Meirin, George, Emily, Andy on 8 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Sarah O'Sullivan

      Sarah O'Sullivan answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      If it was an accident that extended to any public areas of concern then you’d have an immediate response between teams at the site and their emergency environmental teams that go outside the site, the police, local public health services and it would all be overseen by the Office for Nuclear Regulation who have a fantastic incident room facility to keepan eye on all the information and coordinate with government and the media. There’s a whole code of practice for events and emergency planning. Honestly if something like that happens, the response is to be overly cautious until it’s certain things are safe. The best thing for you to do would be not panic because the professionals are on it and follow any instructions you’re given

    • Photo: Andy Buckley

      Andy Buckley answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      Whatever the emergency services tell you!

      But historically there have been three big incidents — Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima — and if we ignore Chernobyl because our reactors are definitely better run than that, then there have been no radiation related injuries attributed to the other two. Even the Chernobyl area now has no elevated risk of radiation-related illnesses among the general population. This implies both that a) the kinds of accidents that happen are rarely significant enough to be known outside the nuclear industry; and b) even really big accidents rarely cause injury to the general population. Much more risk of getting injured by panicking, so sit tight and follow instructions 🙂

    • Photo: Emily Lewis

      Emily Lewis answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      As the others say, the nuclear heath and safety rules in the UK are very strict so in the unlikely event of an accident- listen to what the Office of Nuclear regulation advises. I’d wait in my home for instructions. It might be tempting to get as far away from the site as possible, but people get hurt during evacuation and this might not be necessary so best to wait and find out.

    • Photo: Sophia Pells

      Sophia Pells answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      Like others have already said: there are such strict health and safety rules that it is incredibly unlikely that an incident would occur and if something did happen, the emergency services would know exactly how to deal with it, so they’d tell everyone what to do.

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