Mega-Disasters

NCDP focuses policymaker and media attention on the likelihood of multiple cascading system failures and resulting injuries and deaths from large-scale events such as Hurricane Katrina or radiological emergencies.

HURRICANE KATRINA (FOR RELEASE)In early 2008, before the Institute of Medicine (IOM) established its Committee on Medical Preparedness for a Terrorist Nuclear Event and began organizing workshops on that subject, NCDP Director Dr. Irwin Redlener presented a pioneering TED Talk about how to maximize survival following a nuclear attack. Since then, NCDP has been a key contributor to the policy dialogue about medical and public health preparedness for nuclear terrorism, preparing a seminal white paper, mounting a high-level national policy roundtable meeting, and contributing to second-generation IOM workshops on this theme. 

NCDP has applied its insights about inadequate preparedness for nuclear terrorism to the urgent policy debate about preparedness for nuclear power plant accidents, the relicensing of America’s aging fleet of nuclear plants and the lessons America must learn from the nuclear power accidents in Fukushima, Japan.


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