This map is a fascinating and important image as it does NOT show the many sites of (ongoing) nuclear radiation contamination in communities impacted by uranium extraction and processing. For example, the Navajo Nation has around 270 unreclaimed open pit tailings piles. This is not official "waste" but is quotidian waste that creates longstanding environmental harm.
"The purpose of this essay is to discuss a truly formidable task, the creation of an international nuclear emergency response team"
This quote sets up the rest of the article by showing the reader, regardless of their background or knowledge, that the creation of such a team is going to be difficult. Beyond the standard challenge of creating a unified emergency response team, it is an international one - therefore with language barriers, geographical differences, and large distances to travel in the case of an emergency. And futhermore, it is a team created to deal with the incertainty of nuclear materials in an emergency situation - even more of a challenge.
The author states a background in STS studies, futher work with organization, disasters, and sociocultural risk studies.
"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
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.
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 author of the article is Sonja D. Schmid. She is an associate professor in the Department of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech. She holds a Ph D in STS from Cornell University. Dr. Schmid speaks fluent Russian and primarily investigates the history and organization of Soviet and Eastern European nuclear affairs, as well as the the challenges of global nuclear emergency response.
This article argues that the creation of an international nuclear emergency response group would be an important undertaking due to the global increases in the nuclear industries. The article also establishes some of the chalenges that would be faced in forming, staffing, training, and operating the group.
1. The article analyzes the existing international nuclear regulatory groups and determines their capabilities and possible shortcomings in organizing such a group.
2. The article analyzed how nuclear emergency response has been handeled in the past and how goverments have prepared for future disasters.
3. The article outlined some requirements a nuclear emergency response agency would need to meet and some chalenges it would face.
"The real challenge of a disaster involving nuclear facilities, however, lies in how to handle the unexpected, unpredictable, utterly novel, and barely intelligible chain of events unfolding in real time."
"...existing organizations with subject expertise have negligible international autority and often ave problematic rapport with general public, and confirm the need for a well-coordinated and integrated sociotechnical approach."
"Ellis clearly realized that a nuclear disaster response team would face tremendous challenges on the international level. He emphasized it would be necessary 'to find the sweet spot between national sovereignty and international accountability.'"