The Baltimore Sun –
A hurricane simulation done months ago was alarmingly similar to Florence. The damage was catastrophic.

“In the scenario, Cora also slammed hurricane-force winds into three nuclear power stations. One was damaged. Thirty-three major power substations were at risk from storm surge and major flooding.”

“NLE 2018 featured a comprehensive simulated media environment, including synthetic television, radio, print and social media, and organization websites. News reports, storm advisories, player interviews, GIS modeling, and other scenario elements were revealed to players through the synthetic media platform. The synthetic media platform included news and social media updates which changed based on player actions, interviews, and public affairs activities throughout.”

It was called NLE 2018. News stories from AP do not link to the simulation study. FEMA has a short PR item on it.

2015 paper from Argonne National (nuke) Lab looking at hurricanes and electrical grid “damage to power distribution” – doesn’t mention potential damage to nuke plants.

There seems only simulation, discussion of delivering electricity from utilities and NO attention to damaged nuke plants or nuke waste storage areas.
None.
Zip.
Nada.

The Emergency and Disaster Analysis Group at Argonne nuke labs.

FEMA blog – Preparing Emergency Managers for Hurricane Season

“…In addition to regular training, FEMA led the 2018 National Level Exercise for the simulated Category 4 Hurricane Cora that hit the Virginia coast and simulated a direct strike on Washington, D.C. FEMA’s National Exercise Division led the planning and execution of this large-scale exercise, which was held from April 30 to May11, 2018.

While the 2017 hurricane season was quite active, FEMA and Emergency Managers in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia were – fortunately – not directly affected, so the exercise allowed emergency managers in those locations to test and execute their hurricane planning, response, and recovery actions.”

FEMA – National Level Exercise 2018

“The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) leads national-level exercises every two years. National Level Exercise (NLE) 2018 brought together more than 12,000 individuals across the whole community to examine the ability of all levels of government, private industry, and nongovernmental organizations to protect against, respond to, and recover from a major Mid-Atlantic hurricane. Additionally, more than 450,000 individuals participated in personal preparedness activities and accountability drills as part of the exercise.”

RELATED:

• 43 Government Agencies Training for Hurricane Response
• Homeland Security Geospatial Concept Of Operations
• FEMA GeoPlatform
• – – –        … another geoplatform site

Fancy mapping webpage with hurricane simulation predicting various needs. How does hurricane relief spending compare to these science projects and super computer budgets? Here’s an expensive one – on hurricane Florence “tools”.

Another puff piece – InsideHS: Hurricane ‘Cora’ Is Coming, So NLE18 Leans Forward with Information. We hope they sent these new FEMA t-shirts down to Puerto Rico to at least do something useful in hurricane relief!