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'Radiological preparedness' exercise planned around Callaway nuclear plant

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, April 12, 2011 - WASHINGTON - The timing is unrelated to Japan's nuclear crisis, but a safety exercise in the four counties around Missouri's Callaway nuclear power plant next month seems likely to get far more attention than in previous years.

On Tuesday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced that state and federal officials -- along with county and local emergency experts from Callaway, Osage, Montgomery and Gasconade counties -- will conduct a "routine exercise" on May 11 that aims to "test their ability to protect the health and safety of the public living in the vicinity of the [Callaway] plant."

On the same day, safety officials at Ameren Missouri, which owns and operates the Callaway plant, will conduct a full-scale safety exercise at the power plant itself. Their performance will be observed and evaluated by regional experts from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, federal officials say.

FEMA's announcement explains that the safety exercise is required every two years "to determine the adequacy of the radiological emergency preparedness and response plans" around the nuclear power plant. The exercise "will require the activation of emergency facilities for the state of Missouri" and the four counties.

To help ensure that the Missouri response meets national standards, officials from Region VII of FEMA's Radiological Emergency Preparedness Program will be on hand to observe and evaluate the plans and actions of state, county and local officials during the exercise.

Two days after the exercise is conducted, FEMA will hold a public meeting in Jefferson City "to describe and explain the full-scale response exercise process," the agency says. Representatives from FEMA will discuss the exercise and an expert from the NRC's regional office will explain the parallel safety exercise at the Callaway plant.

The preliminary findings described at that meeting will be "very limited in scope," officials said, because it will take a few months to fully evaluate the exercise.

Missouri's State Emergency Management Agency plans to release more information later about the May 11 safety exercise and the public meeting, which is scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. on May 13 in the main auditorium of Missouri National Guard headquarters in Jefferson City.

"The primary focus of the biennial exercise is on the ability of the state of Missouri, the utility and the participating counties, to protect the health and safety of the public living in the vicinity of the Callaway Nuclear Power Plant," according to the FEMA release. "The evaluated exercise provides reasonable assurance that the appropriate protective measures can be taken on-site and off-site in the event of a radiological emergency."

Officials at Ameren Missouri have said repeatedly that the facility is completely safe. Callaway participates in such full-scale emergency exercises every two years and also holds smaller safety drills. A report on the most recent such drill in November indicates that the facility got good marks.

In the weeks since the Japanese nuclear crisis began, Ameren officials have gone to great lengths to explain why they believe the plant is safe and would not be vulnerable to a major earthquake along the New Madrid fault in southeastern Missouri.

In a statement posted recently on the company's website, Ameren chairman and chief executive Thomas R. Voss wrote that "risks for nuclear energy in the United States today are actually lower than for many other energy sources."

Voss wrote that "we train, test and scrutinize operations incessantly" at Callaway, which he said "was built to withstand a worst-case seismic event for our area. The plant has redundant systems to ensure a safe shutdown in the event of an emergency."

While some questions have been raised about the safety features of the Japanese nuclear complex, Voss wrote that Callaway "has multiple barriers against radiation, including the strongest-available metal cladding on its fuel assemblies, which are housed in a steel pressure vessel that is eight inches thick and is inside a building with four-foot-thick, steel-reinforced concrete walls."

Rob Koenig is an award-winning journalist and author. He worked at the STL Beacon until 2013.