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Based on Chernobyl and Fukushima, the public will not be told promptly in order to avoid a “panic.” I lived in a town that had a new nuke plant in the area. I remember the drills and discussions etc. - but it’s all a waste of time because if you read up on actual nuclear “problems,” the public is not and will not be told. Which reduces all the discussion of air horns, escape routes and iodide capsules so much theatre.
In Chernobyl, they knew that had a blown out reactor with radiation venting into the air but they told the public not to worry and even encouraged the outdoor parade and celebration days later which took place in the shadow the smoking ruins of the reactor. Later, in an interview, their officials said, we never had evacuation drills prior to the accident because we didn’t want people to panic and then we were reluctant to evacuate because without drills, there would be panic. Then they did the math and realized the entire town’s population would be dead if exposed at ambient levels for 2 weeks so they told the public that they were temporarily being moved to another location in order to avoid panic and avoid having to transport belongings that people wished to keep. They all waited outside in the fallout, boarding buses with just hand bags and maybe an extra sweater etc. And when they arrived wherever they were bused, they were informed they could never return.

Fukushima - they had simulation data (SPEEDI) intended (and advertised) as a safety precaution to help the populace evacuate (and the nuke people always insist that will never happen) in the event of an emergency. Well, they had their emergency but the SPEEDI simulation data was suppressed. The reason it was suppressed, after translation from Japanese to English, was something like, “We did not feel like releasing the data.” Therefore, many in Fukushima looked at prevailing winds and determined that heading north and slightly west would take them directly out of the fallout plume. Unfortunately it kept them directly in the densest path of radioactive fallout and then they basically camped in contaminated zones until gov people wearing “space suits” and masks told, a few days later, it wasn’t safe.
Iodide is never distributed. In FUkushima, the governors were specifically ordered not to distribute iodide to children - only one mayor defied that order.
All notification measures and evacuation measures are theatre props. When it comes down to it, the nuke operators can’t face the admission of failure and the resulting chaos.