The occurrence of a nuclear emergency will lead to a sequence of response actions focused on managing the incident and mitigating its effects (the responsibility of the site operator), and protecting the public against actual or potential effects of the incident (the responsibility of the site operator, and governments through the respective emergency planning and pre­paredness authorities). Many activities will be undertaken by the operator and respective orders of government (local, regional, national and, where appropriate, international or neighbour countries) for responding to the emergency in a timely and adequate way.

Rapid and effective coordination among all organizations involved is a crucial issue for a successful response. Coordination among these organiza­tions requires implementation of a well-structured action plan based on an efficient network of command and control centres. Usually, every response organization has its coordination centre to command its tasks and coordi­nate them with the rest of the response organizations. Every command and control centre should have clearly established its role and be endowed with sufficient human and technical resources to fulfil its mission.

12.7.1 Coordination centres operated by licensees

The operator usually has two emergency centres closely interconnected. The first centre is located in the facility and the second in a location outside the areas likely to be affected by the emergency. In addition to these two emergency centres, the licensees also operate an emergency centre in the company headquarters, mainly to be informed, but also to help the reactor operators in the implementation of severe accident guidelines and proce­dures. The functions of the operator’s centres are:

• To provide technical support to the personnel operating to bring the plant to safe conditions as soon as possible and minimize the impact of the emergency on the facility and its workers as well as reduce the uncontrolled release of radioactive material to the environment

• To identify and request external aid required for the plant, according to the evolution of the emergency

• To provide public authorities that manage the external emergency with available information on the emergency at the facility, to facilitate the implementation of measures to protect the population

• To direct urgent off-site emergency activities until the public authorities assume direction of operations.

To adequately fulfil this mission the operator’s operational centres have access to all available information on plant design and operation; adequate procedures to operate the plant in degraded safety conditions; simulators of the behaviour of the plant that can predict the evolution of any event and anticipate the most appropriate mitigation measures; detailed informa­tion on the geography and on-line meteorological data for the site to evalu­ate atmospheric dispersion of potential uncontrolled release of radioactive material by air; redundant connections to the emergency coordination centres used by public authorities to take decisions, to inform them on the development of on-site emergency and request their help if necessary; direct connections with suppliers of equipment and services; connections with the nuclear facilities or similar technology and electricity generation of other countries; and connection with centres of water resources manage­ment, national meteorological services and other relevant coordination centres that operate networks or systems relevant for emergency response.