Traffic Jam From Hell 

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In a disaster like a fire or a hurricane, where the threat to safety is actually visible, emergency personnel are fairly dependable. But, say sociologists, emergency personnel respond differently to radiation leaks, which are invisible.

"It is very likely that emergency responders will have a rate of no-shows during a nuclear event," said Gunter. "Because of the widespread nature of a nuclear accident, they will think of their families first. That isn't figured into these plans."

History and science supports this contention, as sociologist James Johnson has documented in study after study, the most compelling of which was one he conducted in the vicinity of Shoreham Nuclear Power Station on Long Island in New York. When asked "What do you think you would do first if an accident requiring a full scale evacuation of the population within 10 miles of the plant were to occur?", 68 percent of firefighters and 73 percent of bus drivers said family obligations would take precedence over emergency duties. Less than a fourth of public school teachers surveyed said they would help evacuate students.

At one local hospital during the Three Mile Island accident, only six of 70 physicians scheduled for duty showed up -- at a hospital a full 25 miles away from the evacuated zone and supposedly out of range of the released radiation.

Clear roads and well-directed traffic would be critical in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on a nuclear plant, or a severe nuclear accident. To evacuate those closest to the plant, nothing must stand in the way of their cars and the open road headed out of the 10-mile EPZ. This means that when emergency planners tell folks located within the 19 zones inside the EPZ that those in certain zones are to evacuate and others are to stay put based on the direction the wind is carrying the radiation, people will have to take their advice if the plan is to work.

"I don't see a major traffic condition because everyone isn't going to be moving at the same time," said Broome. "If citizens will follow the instructions and directions we give them, it will work."

If things go according to the plan, the media will first hear about the nuclear emergency from emergency planners and then pass valid evacuation instructions along to their audiences. But that assumes that emergency officials can control when and how people find out about a nuclear emergency long enough to staff emergency stations, assess the situation, and advise the public before a mass evacuation began.

Two problems aren't figured into that equation. First, it would be impossible to hide a large-scale terrorist attack or a crash by a commercial, wide-bodied jet into a nuclear power plant since nearby neighbors could see and hear it for themselves. The smoke would be visible for miles and the media would quickly learn about the situation.

The other factor that hasn't been figured in is the popularity of cell phones.

"A nuclear accident is going to be hard to black out," said Gunter. "It's likely that plant personnel will call their families before the public finds out what's going on. Once the word is outside the plant, the media will know. Once they order the bus drivers to evacuate the children, they'll call their families, children will call their parents and the word will be out."

In fact, says Gunter, it's possible that the media could learn about a potential catastrophe before emergency planners do -- or that emergency planners could learn about an accident not from Duke Energy officials, but from the media. By then, he says, the evacuation will likely have already begun.

Spontaneous EvacuationTwo decades of studies and surveys show that even if local officials somehow manage to black out news of a nuclear catastrophe long enough to organize an evacuation, the majority of the population is unlikely to listen to their advice.

According to sociologist R.E. Kasperson in Risk Analysis, a large portion of the public say they distrust information about nuclear dangers and accidents made public through official channels. So even if the information is accurate, Kasperson wrote, it may not be believed.

That's exactly what happened after Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant experienced a partial meltdown in 1979. State officials had ordered a limited evacuation of 3,400 pregnant women and preschool children living within five miles. Instead, 144,000 people fled, some living up to 40 miles from the plant.

But Three Mile Island wasn't an isolated incident in the human nuclear drama. In survey after survey, large percentages of people living within 50 miles of nuclear plants have told surveyors that no matter what they're told to do by local officials, they would evacuate a median distance of 85 to 100 miles from the plant.