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| Science & Technology |
| Nukes Threatened by Quakes Worse Than Before |
| 2011-03-18 |
| 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 |
| #7 And take a look at the Cascadia Subduction Zone quake: Cascadia Subduction Zone 1700 01 26 Magnitude ~9 This earthquake, the largest known to have occurred in the "lower 48" United States, rocked Cascadia, a region 600 miles long that includes northern California, Oregon, Washington, and southern British Columbia. The earthquake set off a tsunami that not only struck Cascadia's Pacific coast, but also crossed the Pacific Ocean to Japan, where it damaged coastal villages. Written records of the damage in Japan pinpoint the earthquake to the evening of January 26, 1700. |
| Posted by: Black Charlie Chinemble5313 2011-03-18 16:11 |
| #6 So what would you think of any engineer who designed an (extremely unforgiving) nuclear power facility for a 7.0 earthquake in CA (which includes the safety factor), when the list of great earthquakes in the US looks like this: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/states/10_largest_us.php Personally, I'd call them nuts. It's not like a big earthquake is a fantasy occurrence. |
| Posted by: Black Charlie Chinemble5313 2011-03-18 16:08 |
| #5 I wonder how a Yellowstone supervolcanic eruption would affect US nuke plants? As if it mattered. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2011-03-18 15:36 |
| #4 And the CA plants have not been designed at all for a quake and tsunami occurring as part of the same disaster. |
| Posted by: Black Charlie Chinemble5313 2011-03-18 12:51 |
| #3 Peter Bradford, former NRC member, states on this video that this study will have to be revised in light of the Japanese quake and tsunami. He says that study was written based on earthquakes only, with the greatest scores given to those near high population zones. http://video.foxnews.com/#/v/4592928/top-10-us-nuclear-plants-facing-highest-quake-risk/?playlist_id=87485 For those who don't know,California is on the ring of fire and its nuclear plants are on the beach of the Pacific Ocean. In addition, if San Onofre had a problem there would be over 7 million people from the local area trying to evacuate all at once. Good luck with that. The biggest issue is that the CA nuclear plants have been designed for a magnitude seven earthquake, which is clearly not designed robustly enough for California. |
| Posted by: Black Charlie Chinemble5313 2011-03-18 12:48 |
| #2 The New Madrid quakes of 1811-1812 were strongly felt over 130,000 square kilometers (50,000 square miles), and moderately across nearly 3 million square kilometers (1 million square miles), spreading through midwestern bedrock while still a territory. The historic 1906 San Francisco earthquake, by comparison, was felt moderately 16,000 square kilometers (6,000 square miles). It actually caused the Mississippi to flow backwards, terrifying the Indians, and while concentrated in MO, it was felt all the way to Boston and Maine and westward into Nebraska. If a quake of this magnitude happened today, with the populated cities and nuclear power plants in this region, the destruction would truly be the US' Armageddon. That said, I still feel living in the midwest to be the safest region possible and only spend a couple of bucks on Powerball ;) |
| Posted by: Lumpy Elmoluck5091 2011-03-18 11:46 |
| #1 The real risk to US nuclear power plants is age and over-regulation. Exposure to radiation over time tends to make a lot of the materials in the plants brittle, so they are supposed to have finite lifespans of about 30-50 years. However, those lifespans are invariably extended many times over. And while the plants may still look good, appearances can be deceiving. But a much worse problem is how plant construction and maintenance are hopelessly micromanaged by the DOE. One horror story that came out of the Palo Verde plant was how after each individual pipe weld, a federal inspector would have to inspect it, which would take a few hours. But the professional welders would be ordered to "look busy", so would weld, and re-weld, welded joints. This is a major no-no, as it significantly weakens the joint. Even with sky high wages, a lot of these professional workmen would quit, because they couldn't stand their quality work being ruined by micromanagement. Back in '92, there was an infamous DOE memorandum (.pdf file) about the process required for changing an emergency light bulb at a decommissioned nuclear facility. It was so ridiculous that even Al Gore thought it was stupid. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2011-03-18 10:06 |