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Nukes Threatened by Quakes Worse Than Before
What are the odds that a nuclear emergency like the one at Fukushima Dai-ichi could happen in the central or eastern United States? They'd have to be astronomical, right? As a commenter on [the internet] put it this weekend, "There's a power plant just like these in Omaha. If it gets hit by a tsunami...." It turns out that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has calculated the odds of an earthquake causing catastrophic failure to a nuclear plant here. Each year, at the typical nuclear reactor in the U.S., there's a 1 in 74,176 chance that the core could be damaged by an earthquake, exposing the public to radiation. No tsunami required. That's 10 times more likely than you winning $10,000 by buying a ticket in the Powerball multistate lottery, where the chance is 1 in 723,145. That's why I don't play the Lotto, except for fun. The nuclear reactor in the United States with the highest risk of core damage from a quake is not the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, with its twin reactors tucked between the California coastline and the San Andreas Fault. It's not on the Pacific Coast at all. It's on the Hudson River. The reactor with the highest risk rating is 24 miles north of New York City, in the village of Buchanan, N.Y., at the Indian Point Energy Center. There, on the east bank of the Hudson, Indian Point nuclear reactor No. 3 has the highest risk of earthquake damage in the country, according to new NRC risk estimates. Tabulation of your nuke's risks at the link. The odds take into consideration two main factors: the chance of a serious quake, and the strength of design of the plant. Nuclear power plants built in the areas usually thought of as earthquake zones, such as the California coastline, have a surprisingly low risk of damage from those earthquakes. Why? They built anticipating a major quake. Other plants in the East, South and Midwest, where the design standards may have been lower because the earthquake risk was thought to be minimal, now find themselves at the top of the NRC's danger list. Because the chance of quakes has been revised. One plant's risk was reduced, but most went up. The chance of serious damage from a quake ranges from Indian Point's 1 chance in 10,000 each year, a relatively higher risk, to the Callaway nuclear plant in Fulton, Mo., where the NRC set the lowest risk, 1 chance in 500,000 each year. I checked some drainage design for that plant, where I discovered the concept of PMP - Probable Maximum Precipitation. Culverts weren't designed for PMP, but we had to know where the water would go. Posted by: Bobby 2011-03-18 |
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