The NRC is not dangerous; it's deadly.
Figure 1. Cesium-137 ground contamination from a postulated dense-packed spent fuel pool fire at the Peach Bottom plant north of Baltimore. The figure shows four different weather patterns.\cite{vonhippel-2016} The red area would have to be evacuated under EPA recommendations. This would be a tragedy of epic proportions. 1.0 MBq/m2 is far below the level at which there will be any detectable harm.
After the Fukushima release, Bill Borchardt, NRC executive director for operations, made clear what the NRC would have done;
If this happened in the U.S., we would go out to 50 miles. That would be our evacuation recommendation.[Nature, 2012-03-05]
But NRC Chairman Jaczko would not have been satisfied. During the Fukushima release, after recommending all American citizens get 50 miles away from the plant, he asked the NRC staff
At that point, it's from there another 50 miles? Another five miles? Another ten miles? Do you have a sense?
Ignoring his boss's fractured syntax, Martin Virgillo, deputy executive director for Reactor and Preparedness Programs, replied "No sir. I wouldn't. I don't have a value for that." When a Fukushima occurs in the U.S., if NRC Preparedness has its way, the evacuation circle radius will start at 50 miles (80 kilometers).
The actual Japanese evacuation started at 3 km which over time was extended to 30 km plus a little extra northwest from the plant. The Japanese evacuation killed 50 elderly people almost immediately and so far has resulted in more than 2000 early deaths. 160,000 people have had their lives uprooted. If the NRC had been in charge, this carnage would have at least tripled.
If there had been no evacuation and people near the plant had merely stayed indoors and masked up during the actual plume passage, it is nearly certain that we would not be able to reliably detect any increase in cancer to these people.
Figure 2. Open-racking left; dense-packing right.
Sadly, under NRC's policy, Fukushima is not the worst case. Not even close. Inexplicably, the NRC allows dense-packing of the spent fuel pools, even if the spent fuel pool is outside containment, which is the case for all American designs. Dense-packed spent fuel pools require active cooling. In an extended Station Black Out, the spent fuel can become uncovered due to pool evaporation. At that point, the fuel will heat up and burst the cladding. Further heat up will create a zirconium fueled fire. We were within three days of that happening at Fukushima.\cite{wang-2012}
Figure 1 shows the Cesium-137 contamination from a postulated spent fuel pool fire from the Peach Bottom plant north of Baltimore.\cite{vonhippel-2016} The authors, vonHippel and Schoeppner, assumed a 1600 PBq release over 32 hours, mostly cesium. This was based on the average of dense-packed releases in a number of NRC studies. This not an unreasonable assumption, and one that NRC can't argue with since these are its own numbers. 1600 PBq is 90 times larger than the cesium release at Fukushima, and 12 times larger than Chernobyl. In such a release, the NRC would evacuate millions, if not tens of millions.
Such a release combined with NRC evacuation orders, would probably result in at least ten thousand deaths and civilization quaking economic and social harm. This could be avoided by requiring open-racking which would increase the cost of nuclear power less than 0.1 cents/kWh. Many people regard the French nuclear program as the most successful ever. French plants only use open-racking.
The NRC first creates the possibility that a massive spent fuel pool release can happen, which means sooner or later if will; and then massively compounds the harm by ordering millions of unnecessary evacuations.
But what if a plant decided on its own that dense-packing was a horrible idea. What's to prevent it from spending some of its own money to eliminate the dense-packing risk? But that sensible investment runs up against Catch Price-Anderson. Under Price-Anderson the cost of a very large release is spread over all 94 USA plants. Any individual plant can only expect to see 1/94th of the benefit of its expenditure. No plant can justify that expenditure to reduce its spent fuel fire risk by 1.06%. A rational regulatory system would require each plant to be fully responsible for the harm it causes.
The current system by which the USA regulates nuclear power, not only prevents nuclear from solving both energy poverty and global warming with the cornucopia of health benefits thereof; but it ensures that what little nuclear we have will kill a lot more people than a rational system. In the Orwellian world we live in that's called the Goldstandard.
Lots of good points in this post(and in all of your writing). Some other point of view on the problem is precondition to fear and no attempt to quantify the risk for the public. This could be changed without touching NRC/EPA entrenched bureaucracy so perhaps worth considering? During the incident people expect guidance and decisions being made rather fast, drastic measures feel better than indecisiveness like "placebo in the syringe" may be more potent than "placebo in the pill". Leaders want to show decisiveness as to following public demand.
Would people (and leaders) consider evacuation differently if the NRC would have to quantify the risk to the public? Would people support evacuations if the message would be "when you evacuate, based on LNT, the worst case scenario, your personal risk of cancer will decrease by 0.015 percent, risk of death from cancer by half of that". By evacuation you risk uprooting all of your life, stress, never being able to come back (not because the place is contaminated, but because abandoned places deteriorate fast, schools, shops, services and jobs in affected areas may not recover in your lifetime). Governments will perhaps compensate you well and you may be a customer of lawyers for life, but it is going to be life somewhere else.
Alternative is to stay in place without panic, mask if outdoors, avoiding excessive outdoors activities, Iodine may or may not be recommended (easy measure). Consuming local foods before thorough hotspot checkups clears them should be avoided. In days the affected area will be checked for contamination and hotspots and further plans will be drawn (evacuation highly unlikely). Increase in cancer risk is unlikely to be measurable, and you would do better to reduce cancer risk by healthier life (you lived next to NPP, so your region is much cleaner and wealthier than powered by coal anyways). Better healthcare is more important for the risk of dying from cancer than mSieverts.
When would I consider evacuation? I guess 1% of increased risk would start to be a threshold. What would be the release to cause that even with LNT?
Ideally people living in a potential "plume zone", once in 30years somewhere in the world, would understand quantitative risks before incidence would occur, because during an accident it is a bit too late to educate.
Seems to me the EPA should have absolutely no jurisdiction in nuclear matters as there are no emissions from correctly operating plants other than some saturated vapor and runoff water. In a perfect world. The NRC should be the governing authority on all things nuclear. That just furthers your point about major reform and a reboot of their goals and metrics to more evidence based standards. But what do I know? All safety agencies seem to become empire builders, extending their authority and power as far as they're allowed even when it kills the thing they’re trying to regulate.