Shoreham Nuclear Power Station Emergency Planning Zone

This ominous and anonymous map, dated January 1983, highlights a semi-circular area with an approximately 13-mile radius from the Shoreham Nuclear Power Station on Long Island. Private property and Emergency Response Planning Areas are noted throughout, with the former including the U.S. Naval Weapons Industrial Reserve Plant and Brookhaven National Laboratory. Emergency Planning Zone Transfer Points are also pinpointed; twelve in total, all at local area schools. A start time, penned in the lower left, indicates the map may have been used for evacuation training purposes. As Shoreham was nearing completion, there was serious concern about the safety of local residents. Following the 1979 incident at Three-Mile Island, federal regulations required a credible emergency evacuation plan for a 10-mile radius of any nuclear power plants. According to Wikipedia, “On February 17, 1983, the Suffolk County Legislature voted 15–1 in favor of a resolution stating that the county could not be safely evacuated in the event of an accident at Shoreham. The newly elected governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, then ordered state officials not to approve any LILCO-sponsored evacuation plan.” This effectively shut down Shoreham operations – it only ever generated (at maximum) 5% of its total output before being decommissioned and dismantled in the early 1990s.