Abstract
Following the accident at the nuclear power plant, government authorities realized to their horror that their existing plans for such an emergency were too vague to address the challenges now facing them. Making matters worse, technical experts disagreed about the state of the crippled reactor and what might happen next. Some confidently asserted that events were under control, while others warned that ongoing radioactive emissions might portend an imminent release of catastrophic proportions. More worryingly still, no one could predict the likelihood or timing of such a development confidently enough to inform decisions about ordering evacuations. Should the local population be evacuated, or would that measure only incite unnecessary panic? Proximity to the capital gave the situation extra urgency. Might it, too, have to be evacuated, with all the unfathomable costs that might entail? Without reliable measurements of the total radioactivity released to the environment or estimates of how large it might grow, policymakers had no choice but to answer these fraught questions on the basis of guesswork.
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