How many nuclear facilities are instaled in powerful sismic zones at USA?
How many nuclear facilities are instaled in powerful sismic zones at USA?
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How many nuclear facilities are instaled in powerful sismic zones at USA?
The MIT Nuclear Science and
Diablo Canyon Nuclear power
Diablo Canyon Nuclear power plant is just 10km or so, if that, from the active offshore
Hosgri Fault Zone. The last major earthquake on or near this fault was as recently as 1927, and a powerful probable 7.1 - 7.3. It "produced a sea-quake (compressional shock transmitted by water) and a seismic sea wave". 'Diablo' means 'Devil' in Spanish, such an apt name for a Nuclear power plant.
http://www.data.scec.org/faults/nwfault.html#MAP
http://www.data.scec.org/fault_index/hosgri.html
"Hosgri Fault Zone:
TYPE OF FAULT: primarily reverse and thrust, with some right-lateral slip
LENGTH: at least 140 km; complex zone of interlaced and parallel fault segments
NEAREST COMMUNITIES: San Simeon, Cambria, Morro Bay, Surf
LAST MAJOR RUPTURE: November 4, 1927, ML7.3 (?)
MOST RECENT SURFACE RUPTURE: Holocene, in part; otherwise Quaternary
SLIP RATE: unknown
INTERVAL BETWEEN MAJOR RUPTURES: unknown
PROBABLE MAGNITUDES: MW6.5 - 7.5
OTHER NOTES: Faults dip to the northeast. This zone is entirely offshore, with the possible exception of the San Simeon fault, which spans the 18 km between San Simeon and Ragged Point (northwest of the region covered on this map). The earthquake of 1927 is poorly located and may not have occurred on the Hosgri fault zone. "
http://www.data.scec.org/chrono_index/lompoc.html
"TIME November 4, 1927 / 5:49 am, PST
LOCATION 33° 43' N, 120° 46' W in the Lompoc area, about 16 km (10 miles) offshore
MAGNITUDE ML 7.1
TYPE OF FAULTING uncertain
FAULT INVOLVED: uncertain; possibly the Hosgri Fault
The earthquake of November 4, 1927 was one of the most powerful shocks in southern California this century. Fortunately, it occurred in a reasonably spasely populated area, and some distance offshore, so damage was lighter than would be expected for a quake of such magnitude. In the area nearest the epicenter (the coastal area near the town of Surf), people were thrown from standing and reclining positions, a concrete highway was cracked, a railroad bridge was thrown out of line, and sand and water were fountained from the ground, leaving behind up to twenty "sand craters".??This earthquake also produced a sea-quake (compressional shock transmitted by water) and a seismic sea wave. The sea-quake was so violent it killed and stunned fish near Point Arguello and shook at least two ships in the area: the S.S. Socony and the Alaska Standard. Neither was seriously damaged, however.??The seismic sea wave (tsunami) produced by the shock was approximately 2 meters high at Surf and Pismo Beach and was recorded from La Jolla (near San Diego) to Fort Point (near San Francisco). The first wave was recorded as positive (not preceded by recession of water) at all the California coastal stations that noted it.?...?"
For USA Earthquakes in general see:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/states/seismicity/
Why on earth would anyone locate a Nuclear power plant in California on the coast after seeing a map like this?
"The red dots represent all
"The red dots represent all earthquakes of magnitude at least 7.0 that occurred from 1973 through 2010."
This lazy approach going back just to 1973 parallels this:
In postulating the maximum-sized earthquake and tsunami that the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex might face, TEPCO's engineers decided not to factor in quakes earlier than 1896. That meant the experts excluded a major quake that occurred more than 1,000 years ago — a tremor followed by a powerful tsunami that hit many of the same locations as the recent disaster.
A TEPCO reassessment presented only four months ago concluded that tsunami-driven water would push no higher than 18 feet (5.7 meters) once it hit the shore at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex. The reactors sit up a small bluff, between 14 and 23 feet (4.3 and 6.3 meters) above TEPCO's projected high-water mark, according to a presentation at a November seismic safety conference in Japan by TEPCO civil engineer Makoto Takao.
"We assessed and confirmed the safety of the nuclear plants," Takao asserted.
However, the wall of water that thundered ashore two weeks ago reached about 27 feet (8.2 meters) above TEPCO's prediction. The flooding disabled backup power generators, located in basements or on first floors, imperiling the nuclear reactors and their nearby spent fuel pools.
You are correct that using
You are correct that using data dating back to only 1973 in assessing seismic risk was misleading. Here is mega-quake data going back to 1900, which is still a very narrow window in geological time.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/world/10_largest_world.php
1906 01 31 8.8
----------------------> 16 year gap
1922 11 11 8.5
1923 02 03 8.5
----------------------> 15 year gap
1938 02 01 8.5
----------------------> 14 year gap
1950 08 15 8.6
1952 11 04 9.0
1957 03 09 8.6
1960 05 22 9.5
1963 10 13 8.5
1964 03 28 9.2
1965 02 04 8.7
-----------------------> 39 year gap
2004 12 26 9.1
2005 03 28 8.6
2007 09 12 8.5
2010 02 27 8.8
2011 03 11 9.0
Mark, What about Diablo
Mark,
What about Diablo Canyon on the coast of California near San Luis Obispo, and San Onofre near San Diego? Both are on or very near major faults and on the exact same ring of fire that affected Fukushima. These two nuclear plants need to be shut down, and as soon as possible, as an outcome of Fukushima. Otherwise the people of California are accepting like sheep the very real risk of their beloved coastline becoming dangerous and uninhabitable, LA or San Diego needing to be evacuated, and the Central valley agricultural economy being permanently devastated by fallout contamination. You yourself know how dangerous alpha-emitters in fallout are when inhaled or ingested and your group recently admitted you can't even properly detect or measure them in the environment. Now is surely the time to act before it all happens here, I do not want to have to say 'I told you so'.
Nuclear power stations are very primitive aging things with major design flaws in terms of safety, and a waste problem that has spiraled out of control. The nuclear power industry is hopefully doomed after Fukushima, it only ever existed as a convenient cover to supply weapons-grade fissile materials to governments, as you well know, and there are much safer ways to just boil water, which is all that they otherwise do (oh, and of course they also pollute Europe and the Pacific, cause measurable fallout in the US, contaminate our food, and make parts of Japan uninhabitable zones of death). “Nuclear Power…a hell of a way to boil water” – Einstein. The emphasis is on the 'hell'. Diablo Canyon and San Onofre are just accidents waiting to happen and must be shut down. I really don't want California to be destroyed the same way that Fukushima prefecture is currently being destroyed, and presumably neither do you.
I think it's important that
I think it's important that we remember the cause of the Fukushima accident. It wasn't until the tsunami came and damaged all the backup generators that there was any problem -- all the reactors appeared to have survived the earthquake. In fact, very few buildings at all in Japan were destroyed by the earthquake; the tsunami caused the destruction. So when we worry about the safety of power plants in the US, we look for things like how well engineered they are against not just earthquakes, but also tsunamis.
A few problems I have just based on the science:
"You yourself know how dangerous alpha-emitters in fallout are."
--> Alpha emitters are not a major part of fall-out. The vast majority of the isotopes in fallout are beta and gamma emitters. We are not well equipped to find alpha particles, but things like americium we could see (if they were there).
"The nuclear power industry ... only ever existed as a convenient cover to supply weapons-grade fissile materials to governments."
--> The US weapons program produces all its own materials at Savannah River, Hanford, and Oak Ridge. They did this successfully (building over 15,000 warheads) long before the first commercial power plant was built in 1958.
"There are much safer ways to just boil water."
--> This is how most power plants work; that's an efficient way to use thermodynamics to make electricity. This is why, in fact, solar thermal power is much more efficient than solar cells.
Tim [BRAWM Team Member]
Tim, Most isotopes of
Tim, Most isotopes of Plutonium in fallout are alpha-emitters yes?
The Argonne National Laboratory factsheet on Plutonium states:
"The main plutonium isotopes at Department of Energy (DOE) environmental management sites are plutonium-238, plutonium-239, plutonium-240, and plutonium-241. Except for plutonium-241, these isotopes decay by emitting an alpha particle." and "Atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, which ceased worldwide by 1980, generated most environmental plutonium. About 10,000 kg were released to the atmosphere during these tests. Average plutonium levels in surface soil from fallout range from about 0.01 to 0.1 picocurie per gram (pCi/g).
Accidents and other releases from weapons production facilities have caused greater localized contamination." and "Plutonium generally poses a health hazard only if it is taken into the body because all isotopes except plutonium-241 decay by emitting an alpha particle, and the beta particle emitted by plutonium-241 is of low energy. Minimal gamma radiation is associated with these radioactive decays. However, there is an external gamma radiation hazard associated with plutonium-244 from it short-lived decay product neptunium-240m. Inhaling airborne plutonium is the primary concern for all isotopes, and cancer resulting from the ionizing radiation is the health effect of concern."
(http://www.evs.anl.gov/pub/doc/Plutonium.pdf)
Tepco has stated publicly that they think that Reactor 1 has melted down and Japanese government advisers are stating they now also think Reactors 2 & 3 may have melted down. "Goshi Hosono, special adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan, acknowledged the likelihood of meltdowns at the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors.
"We have to assume that meltdowns have taken place," Hosono said at a news conference May 16."(Japanese media report)
So Plutonium is presumably going to be present to some degree in fallout from these Reactors. How easy or difficult would that Plutonium contamination therefore be to detect, even in Japan? It seems to need detailed lab analysis to detect it, is that correct?
rethinking...
"I think it's important that we remember the cause of the Fukushima accident. It wasn't until the tsunami came and damaged all the backup generators that there was any problem -- all the reactors appeared to have survived the earthquake."
Actually, they are re-thinking that. I read several days ago that they think some significant damage was caused by the earthquake. I can't find that article, but I did find this one:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-05/15/c_13875604.htm
Oh, here's another version
Oh, here's another version of the same link above, with more detail:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110516a3.html
Tepco detected sharp rise in radiation in reactor 1 immediately after temblor struck: Quake 'hurt reactors before tsunami'
High radiation readings taken in the No. 1 reactor building the night of March 11 suggest it was the quake rather than the loss of cooling that critically damaged the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, a utility source said Saturday.
The belated disclosure could trigger a review of quake-preparedness at nuclear facilities across the country. ......
.....A source at Tepco admitted it was possible that key facilities were compromised before the tsunami.
"The quake's tremors may have caused damage to the pressure vessel or pipes," the official said......
Damage to the plant
Damage to the plant auxiliary equipment during the quake is probable since most systems were not designed to withstand a 9.0 earthquake. The critical question is if the primary coolant piping or valves were damaged during the quake that caused an initial loss of coolant (water). As long as there was instrumentation still operating after the quake, I would expect we would have seen increasing rad levels. It seems this may have been the case. Until ALL of the data is published and analyzed as a whole, we will not know for sure. I will say that we do not have nuclear plants in any zone that would expect that type of super quake (Pacific Northwest). California reactors are designed to withstand a 7.0 magnitude earthquake. Still, a re-evaluation of plant component susceptibility during large earthquakes and integrating this new information in risk assessments I'm sure is forthcoming. But, unfortunately this is a slow process to ensure the analysis is correct.
Scientists expect - with
Scientists expect - with something like a 99% certainty - that we will see a major earthquake in southern california magnitude 8.0 or higher within the next decade or so. So Cal hasn't seen a quake that large in over 100 years. New data shows that massive earthquakes on this fault happen every 45-144 years. A 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck southern California in 1857 ( 153 years ago ) so the big one is already 9 years overdue and devastation could happen at any time.
To have reactors sitting on this fault that can (theoretically) withstand a 7.0 earthquake is meaningless. A 8.0 earthquake is massively larger than a 7.0 quake.
sigh...come now...99%
sigh...come now...8.0...99% certainty? I bet you can't find a quote from a real scientist to back that up.
USGS: "USGS studies put the probability of California being hit by a quake measuring 7.5 or more in the next 30 years at 46 percent"
"The likelihood of a 6.7 quake, comparable in size to the temblors that rocked San Francisco in 1989 and Los Angeles in 1994, is 99 percent statewide."
Reference California "big one" expected to pale next to Japan quake
Once again: If you are going to provide numbers on this site, we strongly request references. We will continue to fight misinformation on this site.
The two reactors in California are not on the San Andreas fault line. With that said, we need to learn from every failure that occurred at not just the plants at Fukushima, but all other nuclear plants in Japan that were subjected to violent shaking. There are additional plants in Onagawa and Tokai that were as close to the epicenter and subjected to many huge aftershocks of 7.0 and greater, and did not fail.
I stand corrected. the 99%
I stand corrected. the 99% certainty was regards to 6.7. STILL - that scientists have said there is a 46% probability that there will be a quake of 7.5 or larger and we have nuclear plants that were designed only to withstand a 7.0 earthquake strikes me as a dereliction of our responsibility to protect public health. 46% probability is pretty high. And it doesn't need to be on the fault line to be severely impacted. Why would we take such a chance?
Hi dchivers and all
Hi dchivers and all ...
Surprises ... Gives slightly surprises us ...
The next message is not a Conspiracy theory ... the next message is SCIENCE ...
Please, I invite you all to ask for the next geologycal inform.
It has always been speculated that the southern coast of California USA is the region most likely to suffer earthquakes. According to a recent study that will be published in the next report, U.S. Geological Survey, there are between 10 and 15% probability that an earthquake measuring 8 or higher strike the U.S. coast from central Vancouver Island to border between the states of Washington and Oregon. The cities most at risk are Victoria (British Columbia) and Portland (Oregon). Previsón time: from 50 years hence.
This is correct. This is
This is correct. This is the Juan de Fuca submersion zone which is a small tectonic plate submerging under the North American plate, which created the Cascade Mountain Range. These types of submerging zones are ripe for very large (mega-thrust) earthquakes similar to Japan. Currently, there are no operating nuclear reactors in this region.
San Onofre is maybe five
San Onofre is maybe five miles or so from the offshore
Newport-Inglewood Rose-Canyon Fault Zone,
according to the US Geological Survey at:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqscanv/FaultMaps/118-34.html
also check out the link for this particular active fault at Caltech's Southern California Earthquake Data Center:
http://www.data.scec.org/fault_index/newrose.html
some quotes from this site describing this fault (note the question marks):
"TYPE OF FAULTING: right-lateral (?)
LENGTH: roughly 90 km
OTHER NOTES: This fault zone lies entirely offshore. It is poorly located in parts, and not well studied.
PROBABLE MAGNITUDES: 6.0 - 7.2 (?);
INTERVAL BETWEEN MAJOR RUPTURES: uncertain
NEAREST COMMUNITIES: Laguna Beach, Dana Point, Oceanside, Encinitas"
The Newport-Inglewood Rose-Canyon Fault last had a major quake in 1933 Southeast of Long Beach, a Magnitude 6.4 which caused "widespread damage to buildings throughout Southern Califonia" (Wikipedia)
Interestingly the Earthquake Data Center fault map shows the fault as almost continuous down the coast, but the USGS map makes it 'disappear' as it passes San Onofre, now, isn't that strange?
Compare:
http://www.data.scec.org/faults/sofault.html#MAP
and
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqscanv/FaultMaps/118-34.html
The nuclear power plant at San Onofre lies between Santa Ana, Laguna Beach and Oceanside, check it out on Google Maps they have a very high resolution view of it.
San Onofre is right on the beach, please do look at Google maps to see just how 'on the beach' it is if you have not been there. It is strikingly similar to Fukushima in general location, but unfortunately without Fukushima's breakwater, although then again that breakwater wasn't much use against a Tsunami.
A beach on an active poorly-studied Earthquake zone is really rather a stupid location for a nuclear power plant.
Also the plant is right next to Freeway I5 which is the main coast-road South between LA and San Diego. If you have ever driven on I5 past San Onofre you will know the plant is very close indeed to the freeway, almost like you are driving through the site. The freeway is almost as near to the reactor domes as they are apart from each other. It might therefore be something of a problem if one is unlucky enough to be at San Onofre Camp Site or on the State Beach when an Earthquake and Tsunami were to hit, the only obvious evacuation road is I5 and it runs right next to the nuclear power plant. If the freeway South were damaged by the quake, one's escape route North may be a slow gauntlet crawl past a damaged nuclear power plant, imagine the rubber-neckers on I5 slowing down the traffic to a snail-pace crawl, even slower than rush hour, as one is forced to drive worryingly slowly past those reactor domes...
dchivers Another point about
dchivers
Another point about Fukushima.
we all are Fukushima today.
whether security measures had worked perfectly, as provided by "theoretical calculations", although there had been a partial core melt due to lack of refrigeration (anyone who had been the cause), it need not have been stored hydrogen in the building. Hydrogen has been released by the chimneys of gas escape into the atmosphere. Evacuation chimneys are the two steel towers, about 100 meters you see in the pictures and are connected to the suppression pool in two of the reactors. Obviously have never thought to use them for the two reactors at the same time, it has not been the case and probably (I have my doubts), this has led to the explosion of reactor 4 building and the destruction of the pool which contained, not only spent fuel, but hot all the fuel they had just removed from the reactor Cuba, as we have been assured. These towers are in all the nuclear plants are designed to rid the atmosphere of small leaks of radioactive gases inside the containment, so that dilution in the air and, at worst, do not affect the concentration of radioactive materials into the atmosphere.
However, General Electric, to keep active plants poorly designed boiling water, after many reports about the potential consequences of an accident, first modified the design and added the so-called Mark I, ie "the bull", is a circular pool or reservoir, located at the base of the reactor and out of contention, with the mission to collect water that may exit the reactor in case of accidents and avoid having a blast. Water, radioactive, would be stored there. But a new danger existed in that the pressure in the torus would increase to blow it or tear (which is precisely one of the things that happened in Fukushima, as TEPCO own images at the beginning of everything).
Then they decided to add an element of passive safety, connect the tank is circular (the suppression pool), a pipeline, if the pressure in the torus increase dangerously, in turn ease the pressure, taking the steam radioactive water and other gases to the outside, but, after all, avoiding cracks or breaks in the reactor vessel, as technicians could handle the flow of the pipe and send it to the fire escape. In short, this means that all this has stopped working good, BUT NOT BY THE TSUNAMI, but rather because the quake crippled the entire system physically, for being a passive system should not depend on electricity. It is clear that "the bull" broke, by the first explosion that occurs in these cases, the so-called "steam explosion", and the hydrogen was released into the building and, as seen in the images of the explosion of reactor 3 , the containment in the form of light bulb, this event must be destroyed.
It is also true that all the calculations of how these security systems are purely theoretical, because no one had ever faced a real accident or had carried out an experiment of this scale.
Thank you very much
Thank you very much dchivers.
this slow process to ensure the analysis is correct will take place before the Big One?
How magnitude is expected for the Big One?
Are we seeing nuclear security in a scale of time only interesting for the economy? A scale of time of dwarfs..
Geologycal scale of time, physics must be conscients (ther time scale is bigger, too), say us that our nuclear security is very poor understood.
As far as taking place
As far as taking place before the Big One? No one really knows, earthquake prediction is not a reality. What we know is that pressure is building in both the San Andreas and related fault systems that could snap all at once or may release energy in a number of small tremors. The worse case scenario is a 7.5-8.0 earthquake somewhere along the San Andreas fault. This could be catastrophic if located near a nuclear plant, but San Onofre and San Luis Obispo are located quite a distance from the fault line. However, this may not matter much, as the distance from the epicenter is not nearly as important as the shake frequency (or modes) that reach the plant. Every component within the system, and the system itself, have a number of "modes" called resonances where shaking at certain frequencies come with maximum damage through amplification. Normally, individual components are tested to locate these and the failure probabilities informed within the earthquake risk assessment. However, it is hard to understand the response of the WHOLE system (integrated components) to various shake modes. This type of testing would be similar to what is done for new airframe designs when subjecting the entire fuselage and wings to turbulence modes (For Example). This type of testing is obviously not practical for a nuclear power plant, so everything must be modeled in computer simulations. However, models are not perfect and normally require some amount of benchmarking to real (smaller scale) systems. Fukushima may shed light on weak points in any nuclear plant during high and low frequency shaking and may even provide benchmarks for certain resonance models. The details of this type of analysis are pretty intense and brings together many different technical disciplines.
The only lesson we have
The only lesson we have learnt is each mayor nuclear accident is diferent of any other.
We can assit security... But mayor nuclear accidents will continue taking place dued to many causes: earthquakes, human errors, technical failures, terrorism, floods, fire.
the questions are: Where? and When?
Excellent response, but it
Excellent response, but it also highlights how massive is the nuclear industry. Lots and lots and lots of interesting work for academics.
Thank you for your answers
Thank you for your answers dchivers.
Other incidents like floods
Other incidents like floods could take place...
If the NNP at Missisipi, near Port Gibson had a mayor accident wich would be the evacuation road?
this?
http://www.wlbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=14634112
Flood waters in relation to
Flood waters in relation to Nuclear power plant. Missisipi.
video... wow wow wow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHz3p1URWbA