On the seventh anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, the NREFS results were featured in a major article in the Financial Times: Fukushima nuclear disaster: did the evacuation raise the death toll? Journalist Robin Harding writes: Zero evacuation may be implausible. At the height of the crisis there were fears of much worse contamination. The question is rather whether people should have been kept away for weeks, not years. “With hindsight, we can say the evacuation was a mistake,” says Philip Thomas, a professor of risk management at the University of Bristol and leader of a recent research project
Publication launch event at the University of Bristol
Nuclear power can provide the large quantities of carbon-free electrical energy needed to sustain Western living standards. But how should we cope when things go badly wrong? When an accident causes the core to melt, the containment to fail and large quantities of radioactive fallout to be deposited on the surrounding countryside? Just like at Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima Daiichi in 2011. Philip Thomas, Professor of Risk Management at the University of Bristol, led a multi-university team to tackle this thorny issue head on. Watch his lecture at the public launch of the NREFS results. Coping with a big
NREFS at the UK parliament: coping with a big nuclear accident
The NREFS project was invited to present its findings at a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Nuclear Energy at the UK Parliament on Wednesday 11th March 2015. The meeting was hosted by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) and chaired by Ian Liddell-Grainger MP. Professor Philip Thomas (University of Bristol) introduced the NREFS project. He revealed the stand-out message from the research: nuclear power is a lot less scary than many fear even when it goes badly wrong. Dr Ian Waddington (Ross Technologies, Bristol) presented the results of a J-value analysis on evacuation, relocation and countermeasures
Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
On 30th October 2014, Prof. Philip Thomas, Prof. William Nuttall and Dr Ian Waddington were at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation in London to present results from the UK/India NREFS research project, aimed at determining how best to manage in the aftermath of a major nuclear accident. The NREFS project considers post-Fukushima lessons from a broad public policy perspective, in particular examining the history of nuclear siting decisions, evolving legal considerations, accident mitigation policies (safety, environmental protection and energy security) and the role of insurance in dealing with severe accident risks. The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation is a UK charity, established in
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City University London academic to lead consortium on nuclear accidents
Philip Thomas, Professor of Engineering Development at City University London, will be leading a £615,000 research project to examine measures put in place to protect nuclear power plant workers and the public after accidents at Chernobyl (Ukraine, 1986) and Fukushima (Japan, 2011) in order to assess the best set of countermeasures to apply after a big nuclear accident. The NREFS project (Management of Nuclear Risk Issues: Environmental, Financial and Safety) is sponsored by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), as part of the UK-India Civil Nuclear Power Collaboration. The UK consortium will consist of four academic partners: City,