Communicating During and After a Nuclear Power Plant Incident: Comprehensive FEMA Guide to Emergency Notifications, Federal Roles and Responsibilities, Critical Questions and Answers for Spokespersons

This federal emergency action document has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. This document provides communications guidance for domestic nuclear power plant (NPP) incidents, including sample text and suggested answers to anticipated public and media questions. This document also provides background information explaining roles and responsibilities across all levels of government during an NPP incident. While primarily created for Federal leaders who will speak to the public, this document should also complement the routinely exercised communication materials used by State, local, and tribal officials.

The Principal Level Exercise 3-10, a cabinet level exercise with a NPP incident as the focus, highlighted the importance of communicating timely and accurate information to people potentially at risk from an NPP incident. Providing information on avoiding radiation, saving lives, protecting property, or calming fears requires the delivery of coordinated, prompt, reliable, and actionable information to the whole community through the use of clear, consistent, accessible, and culturally and linguistically appropriate methods that will increase public understanding and encourage people to take practical steps to protect themselves.

In the United States, Federal, State, local, and tribal officials share responsibility for coordinating and communicating information to the public for a NPP incident. State, local, and tribal authorities possess the primary responsibility for making protective action decisions and communicating health and safety instructions to their affected populations. As laid out in the National Response Framework (NRF), a number of Federal agencies also play an important role in responding as well as communicating and coordinating emergency public information with State, local, and tribal agencies. This guidance document serves as a resource for communicators who provide information to the public, the news media, and other stakeholders during and after a NPP incident.

Public officials, incident managers, and their spokespersons will provide specific and frequent information updates. These updates will cover what has occurred, how to protect people, actions taken to mitigate the incident, what residents can expect in the future, and other details. These communications will often originate from a Joint Information Center (JIC) established near the incident site. National spokespersons will reinforce the actions of local and State decision-makers and build confidence and trust that all levels of government engage in every possible way in order to resolve the situation and protect the public.

A broad interagency group of communication experts, convened under the Federal Radiological Preparedness Coordinating Committee (FRPCC), developed the guidance in this document, with assistance from State and local communicators. The FRPCC will continue to maintain this guidance, which employs effective risk communication strategies based on proven communications principles.