Simpler escape process proposed

Kingston officials are seeking to reduce by one-third the amount of the town included in its emergency evacuation plan. The move, they say, would simplify evacuation in a nuclear emergency and allow all students to gather in a high school outside the 10 -mile emergency zone around the Pilgrim plant.

The proposed change has been forwarded to the state and federal agencies that oversee the emergency plans of the five towns -- Carver, Duxbury, Kingston, Marshfield, and Plymouth -- that are at least partially within the 10-mile emergency preparation zone around the Plymouth plant.

The change requires approval at the state level by the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency and, at the federal level, by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission . Peter Judge of the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency said the agency has forwarded the request to Entergy , Pilgrim's owner, which must ask the NRC to approve it, since emergency plans are part of the plant's operating license.

When the Pilgrim nuclear power plant was built in 1972 , towns partially within the 10-mile radius were given the choice of whether to include the whole town, or only the part within the 10-mile radius from Pilgrim, in their emergency plans.

Marshfield chose to include only the part within 10 miles from the plant, about one-third of the town's area. Kingston, on the other hand, decided to include the whole town.

In recent years, however, local officials and some of Kingston's 12,000 residents have grown skeptical of the town's ability to carry out a successful evacuation in the event of a nuclear accident. Kingston officials said they are proposing the change now to make their plan more realistic and practical.

``It could alleviate the stress on the system," Selectman Paul Gallagher said, by sending fewer cars into the town's bottlenecked streets. Officials said a major advantage of reducing the emergency zone is freeing part of the town to serve as a reception area for vulnerable residents -- particularly students and nursing home residents -- in the event of an evacuation.

Fire Chief and emergency management director David McKee , who first suggested the zone change, said Silver Lake High School would become the gathering place for all students attending Kingston schools. Students would be bused there and then picked up by parents.

Currently, the town's plans call for students to be bused to ``reception centers" at schools in Bridgewater .

Similarly, residents of nursing homes or other medical facilities would be transported to Silver Lake Commons (formerly Evanswood Center for Older Adults ) near the high school , instead of reception centers in Bridgewater.

Critics of the town's emergency plan have called the idea of bu sing students out of town unrealistic and likely to be ignored, as parents probably would drive straight to schools to find their children. ``That's what the majority of parents tell me," McKee said. Anxious parents driving to individual schools and removing students would create ``an efficiency nightmare," he said. Residents farther from the Plymouth nuclear power plant would be expected to ``shelter in place" -- the phrase used for ``stay home" -- while residents within the 10-mile zone, which stops short of the Fire Station on Pembroke Street, evacuate. McKee said the change would pose ``no new risk" to residents beyond the zone, noting that Marshfield and Carver evacuation plans already stop at the federal 10-mile line. The revised plan would send fewer local residents into traffic tie-ups.

``In a nutshell, it's going to be less people," McKee said. ``I feel parents are more likely to allow this system to work."

Gallagher noted that evacuation plans funnel residents into roadways -- routes 3A, 27, 106, and 44 -- that are prone to tie-ups during routine traffic and likely to be used by residents of other towns as well, including Plymouth, in the event of an emergency. The board is also seeking more guidance on preparations and procedures for ``sheltering in place" from state and federal officials, Gallagher said, so it can pass this information to residents.

The desire to make emergency plans more practical highlight s the inadequacies of the current guidelines for emergency evacuation strategy, according to nuclear industry critics. Local nuclear critic Mary Lampert , head of Duxbury's Nuclear Advisory Committee , urged Kingston officials to back a new approach that would expand regional evacuation zones rather than reduce the town's own evacuation zone.

Lampert also said that even with a reduced zone, the town still would be relying on buses from outside town to drive into the zone to carry students and special-needs residents to Silver Lake meeting points -- a process estimated by the state at three to five hours. Parents would be unlikely to wait that long to pick up their children.

The larger point, Lampert said, is that regional towns are no longer ``pretending" that evacuation plans made years ago are practical.

``They're coming out and saying it's not doable," she said.

State and federal officials, however, have been less pessimistic about the prospects of a successful evacuation in the event of a nuclear emergency. While evacuations last year from the Gulf Coast in the face of hurricanes were slow, a Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency spokesman this year pointed out that most people successfully evacuated danger zones.

Robert Knox can be contacted at rc.knox@gmail.com.