Wednesday, May 23, 2012

What is a Framework?

The various frameworks mandated under PPD-8 and elsewhere continue to struggle towards finality with an announced deadline of June 30th at the White House. So the word "framework" largely undefined will be the principal contribution towards planning and preparedness of the Obama 1st term (assuming a second one occurs! The first so-called National Framework was the spring 2008 issuance of the National Response Framework issued by the Bush Administration reflecting supposedly the lessons learned and correcting problems in the NATIONAL RESPONSE PLAN issued final final in April 2005 and never fully implemented before Hurricane Katrina occurred. A brief history of that effort appears in Claire B. Rubin's first and second edition of her book--EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT-The American Experience issued under the auspices of PERI--now largely defunct. A more detailed examination of this evolution will be available this fall from the Institute for Naval Proceedings in a book principally written and edited by John F. Morton. The bottom line is that the so-called FRAMEWORKS were designed to kick off detailed plans, SOP's, Concept of Operations and other documents. With the 15 original scenarios now consolidate to eight (8)or less, none of which deal with critical infrastructure failures from whatever the cause, the result is chaos and little common understanding of what exactly can be expected from the federal government in almost any probable scenario and certainly not in any catastrophic event context. So drafts of the FRAMEWORKS incorporating public comments have now been issued. Finalization by review or signature by President Obama is unknown but I suspect it is the next Administration that will finalize while the Obama Administration and the NEW FEMA hope and pray that the "big one" does not occur before the election. Time will tell!

Monday, May 21, 2012

NRC and NEI and Fukishima

The NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] has in fact registered that Fukishima may directly and indirectly threaten the nuclear power industry that is regulated by the NRC. Offsite safety issues, which should involve FEMA due to its assigned tasks going back to President James Early Carter as the expert judges of offsite safety considerations but does not has left NRC to deal with the issues arising out of Fukishima. All repeat all nuclear power reactors are NOW shut down in Japan and with a tense summer facing the Japanese over brownouts or worse as they shut off 30% of their energy supply by shutting the reactors it will be quite interesting to see what happens. In the meantime, the NEI [Nuclear Enterprise Institute] continues to launch a daily stream of "Be happy, don't worry" press releases over US impacts and even Japanese impacts of the Fukishima event. The potential for further problems from Reactor #4 at Dai Ichi seems to be the dominant issue with some experts expecting further dire outcomes from that reactor. NEI was of course the Edison Electric Institute but changed its names over a decade ago. It remains the "trade association" for the nuclear power industry. All in all since March 11th, 2011, when the earthquake and tsunami hit in Japan the fallout from the event grows daily in Japan and elsewhere. The trend line for further problems in nuclear power is up not down IMO. And waste storage and uranium supplies over the rest of the century continue to be problematic. Andy Mitchell continues to run the TECH HAZARDS programs in FEMA. I recently posted on HLSWatch.com on the history of E.O. 12657 published in November 1988 and requiring FEMA to prepare for the contingency that STATES and their local governments fail to adquately plan or prepare for a core melt accident, OR RESPOND! Meaning the STATES and/or their local governments fail to respond adequately. The NRC used its RASCAL modeling system to model the Fukishim event and recommend a 50 mile evacuation zone from the reactors. IF FEMA were forced to adopt a 50 mile EPZ by NRC it would in fact create absolute chaos in that program. The REPP [radiological emergency preparedness program] continues to be unable to face the advent of social media 2.0 on its various preparedness programs. With the JIC now at the White House in large scale events, few will be understanding of why that is a disaster in itself. Still, President Obama may just escape from office by defeat by not having any large scale catastrophic events [other than those led by Wall Street] during his time in office. His basic strategy in HAITI--ignore HAITI. His basic strategy in FUKISHIMA--ignore Fukishima. So far due to the incompetence of the MSM it has succeeded and neither appear to be election issues.

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