Chapter 15
Initial Emergency Response Efforts
The initial moments of any emergency are rushed, confusing, and essential; how these
moments are handled can set the stage for how the emergency itself will be handled,
and mistakes or oversights at this early stage can escalate and propagate forward
if they are not recognized or corrected. Thus, it is important that key personnel—
the Incident Commander, Health and Safety Officer, and others—be able to attend
to not only the “routine” risks and issues that accompany any emergency, but the
radiological matters as well. Further, those engaged in the response must also be
able to properly prioritize both radiological and non-radiological concerns rather than
fixating on radiological matters because they are novel and frightening, or ignoring
them because they are unfamiliar and poorly understood.
While there has never been a radiological attack there have been many radiological
accidents and incidents that we have learned from. To that we can add the experience
from nuclear reactor accidents in the United States, the Soviet Union, the former
Yugoslavia, and Japan as well as the further experience from the atomic bombings
in Japan (although those will not be the subject of this chapter). Finally, people have
been working with radiation and radioactivity for more than a century and have
learned to do so safely and to manage the risks it poses in industrial, reactor, and
emergency settings; the lessons that have been learned in these decades of experience
can be applied to many aspects of radiological and nuclear emergency response.
15.1 The First 100 Min
In 2017 the US Department of Homeland Security published a document detailing
how they anticipated the first 100 min of a radiological response might unfold [12].
And, while they acknowledged that, in an actual emergency, events might unfold
differently or might take more time, this document laid out the important tasks that
are expected to take place during the first stages of a response to a radiological
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
P. A. Karam, Radiological and Nuclear Terrorism,
Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69162-2_15
163
Initial Emergency Response Efforts
The initial moments of any emergency are rushed, confusing, and essential; how these
moments are handled can set the stage for how the emergency itself will be handled,
and mistakes or oversights at this early stage can escalate and propagate forward
if they are not recognized or corrected. Thus, it is important that key personnel—
the Incident Commander, Health and Safety Officer, and others—be able to attend
to not only the “routine” risks and issues that accompany any emergency, but the
radiological matters as well. Further, those engaged in the response must also be
able to properly prioritize both radiological and non-radiological concerns rather than
fixating on radiological matters because they are novel and frightening, or ignoring
them because they are unfamiliar and poorly understood.
While there has never been a radiological attack there have been many radiological
accidents and incidents that we have learned from. To that we can add the experience
from nuclear reactor accidents in the United States, the Soviet Union, the former
Yugoslavia, and Japan as well as the further experience from the atomic bombings
in Japan (although those will not be the subject of this chapter). Finally, people have
been working with radiation and radioactivity for more than a century and have
learned to do so safely and to manage the risks it poses in industrial, reactor, and
emergency settings; the lessons that have been learned in these decades of experience
can be applied to many aspects of radiological and nuclear emergency response.
15.1 The First 100 Min
In 2017 the US Department of Homeland Security published a document detailing
how they anticipated the first 100 min of a radiological response might unfold [12].
And, while they acknowledged that, in an actual emergency, events might unfold
differently or might take more time, this document laid out the important tasks that
are expected to take place during the first stages of a response to a radiological
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
P. A. Karam, Radiological and Nuclear Terrorism,
Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69162-2_15
163