The references list for this article shows a wide variety of resources that were used to write the paper. They vary in topics, some directly looking at nuclear energy, others at the risks society takes, regulations, and organizational structures.
The three quotations that more capture the message of the article are:
"Regardless of the specific national roadmaps, however, nuclear safety has returned to the international stage with a vengence." - I love the use of 'vengence' because it's such a powerful descriptor.
"Numerous case studieshave documented that meaningfully engaging lay communities in decisions... enable greater vigilence and raise confidence about individual emergency preparedness."
"The real challenge of a disaster involving nuclear facilities lies in how to handle the unexpected, unpredictible, utterly novel, and barely intelligible chain of events unfolding in real time."
I have never hear about the 3 Mile Island accident, so I researched that. I had never heard of the fact that this happened kinda close to home. Granted it was only a partial meltdown, but still.
Emergency response is the main idea in this article, but specifically that related to nuclear emergencies. An interesting point was made about the confidentiality of the plants and their "trade secrets" of sorts. While being transparent is helpful for safety reasons, it also reduced the profitability of the company, since other companies would be able to use their ideas. EMS knows a lot about respecting privacy through HIPPA, however it is also important to know the layout of important or potentially hazardous buildings within a response district. This would be a necessary compromise to make between the nuclear emergency response team and the nuclear leaders.
The article uses Fukushima as a catalyst to progress the discussion of creating a effective Nuclear Emergency Response Team. Schmid uses the examples of the unexpected flow of events to support the unprecedented need for a diverse group of individulals, not just "Scientific Elites". She compares the responses fromthe 1979 Three Mile Island incident to the current state of respond to show how little has changed dispite the short lived boost in attention.
The article has a very diverse bibliography with multiple references from the International Atomic Energy Agency. If you can learn anything, it's that Schmid pulls information from reliable sources.
The author compares existing and previous nuclear regulation/safety/etc committees, analyzing differences between them and various shortcomings. This information is used to develop the author's idea of a more effective and safe oganization to enforce regulations and train an emergency response team.
The author also looked at how previous emergencies were handled and what new regulations stemmed from each, as well as how those have worked since their implementation, and what more can be done.
Schmid’s main argument is that in order to create an effective international nuclear emergency response team one must take the opinions of the “lay community” not only the opinions of the scientific elites. This increase in diversified opinions will allow for not only a better prevention method, but for more of a better response to disaster.
This has been referenced in "Nuclear Disaster at Fukushima Daiichi" by R Hindmarsh.
"In the interest of sustainable and socially legitimate solutions, arguably decisions to even the technical responses to disasters should not be left to scientists and engineers alone"
This statement is very thought-provoking and is not exactly expected in a research article - that a scientist's or engineer's decision should be influenced or editied by those without such specific education or expertise.
-balancing point between safety and profitability
-disaster did not happen as a chain of events that made it bound to occur at some point, it happened on a system that was in good shape
-over regulation of the industry and workers results in a lack of flexibility and therefore an inability to be creative in emergency situations
-need emergency response team to be skilled professionally and socially, but on a low budget - and very importantly - cooperation from nuclear corporations