Indians and Pilgrims are at it again.
What are the odds? US nuke plants ranked by quake risk
So much for San Andreas: Reactors in East, Midwest, South have highest chance of damage
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 pro-nuclear commenter on msnbc.com 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.
And it turns out that 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 the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, a four-hour drive down the Pacific coast at San Clemente, surrounded by fault lines on land and under the ocean.
It's not on the Pacific Coast at all. It's on the Hudson River.
One in 10,000
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 provided to msnbc.com.
A ranking of the 104 nuclear reactors is shown at the bottom of this article, listing the NRC estimate of risk of catastrophic failure caused by earthquake.
The chance of a core damage from a quake at Indian Point 3 is estimated at 1 in 10,000 each year. Under NRC guidelines, that's right on the verge of requiring "immediate concern regarding adequate protection" of the public. The two reactors at Indian Point generate up to one-third of the electricity for New York City. The second reactor, Indian Point 2, doesn't rate as risky, with 1 chance in 30,303 each year.
The plant with the second highest risk? It's in Massachusetts. Third? Pennsylvania. Then Tennessee, Pennsylvania again, Florida, Virginia and South Carolina. Only then does California's Diablo Canyon appear on the list, followed by Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island.
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.
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.
Playing the odds
The NRC, the federal agency responsible for nuclear power safety, says the odds are in the public's favor. "Operating nuclear power plants are safe," the NRC said when it reported the new risk estimates.
Every plant is designed with a margin of safety beyond the strongest earthquake anticipated in that area, the NRC says.
But the NRC also says the margin of safety has been reduced.
In the 35 years since Indian Point 3 got its license to operate in 1976, the same era when most of today's U.S. nuclear reactors were built, geologists have learned a lot about the dangers of earthquakes in the eastern and central U.S.
No one alive now has memories of the South Carolina quakes of 1886, which toppled 14,000 chimneys in Charleston and were felt in 30 states. Or the New Madrid quakes of 1811-1812 in Missouri and Arkansas - the big one made the Mississippi River run backward for a time.
But the geologists and seismologists remember, learning their history from rocks, and steadily raising their estimates of the risk of severe quakes. New faults are found, and new computer models change predictions for how the ground shakes. The latest estimates are drawn from the 2008 maps of the U.S. Geological Survey. Of special note, the USGS said, was an allowance for waves of large earthquakes in the New Madrid fault area roughly centered on the Missouri Bootheel, as well as inclusion of offshore faults near Charleston, S.C., and new data from the mountains of East Tennessee. With each new map, the areas of negligible risks have receded.
Based on those new maps, the NRC published in August 2010 new estimates of the earthquake risk at nuclear power reactors in the eastern and central states. Besides the proximity, severity and frequency of earthquakes, the new estimates take into account the design standards used at each plant, along with the type of rock or soil it's built on. This week, the NRC provided additional data to msnbc.com for the relatively few reactors in the Western states, allowing a ranking to be made of all 104 reactors with the latest data.
The top 10
Here are the 10 nuclear power sites with the highest risk of suffering core damage from an earthquake, showing their NRC risk estimates based on 2008 and 1989 geological data.
1. Indian Point 3, Buchanan, N.Y.: 1 in 10,000 chance each year. Old estimate: 1 in 17,241. Increase in risk: 72 percent.
2. Pilgrim 1, Plymouth, Mass.: 1 in 14,493. Old estimate: 1 in 125,000. Increase in risk: 763 percent.
3. Limerick 1 and 2, Limerick, Pa.: 1 in 18,868. Old estimate: 1 in 45,455. Increase in risk: 141 percent.
4. Sequoyah 1 and 2, Soddy-Daisy, Tenn.: 1 in 19,608. Old estimate: 1 in 102,041. Increase in risk: 420 percent.
5. Beaver Valley 1, Shippingport, Pa.: 1 in 20,833. Old estimate: 1 in 76,923. Increase in risk: 269 percent.
6. Saint Lucie 1 and 2, Jensen Beach, Fla.: 1 in 21,739. Old estimate: N/A.
7. North Anna 1 and 2, Louisa, Va.: 1 in 22,727. Old estimate: 1 in 31,250. Increase in risk: 38 percent.
8. Oconee 1, 2 and 3, Seneca, S.C.: 1 in 23,256. Old estimate: 1 in 100,000. Increase in risk: 330 percent.
9. Diablo Canyon 1 and 2, Avila Beach, Calif.: 1 in 23,810. Old estimate: N/A.
10. Three Mile Island, Middletown, Pa.: 1 in 25,000. Old estimate: 1 in 45,455. Increase in risk: 82 percent.
(This short list of the top 10 sites, or plants, groups together reactors at the same site if they have the same risk rating, such as Sequoyah 1 and 2. The full list of 104 separate reactors is below at the bottom of the text.)
A rising risk
Northeast of Chattanooga, Tenn., the Tennessee Valley Authority's Sequoyah 1 and 2 nuclear plants had been thought to have a risk of core damage from an earthquake happening once every 102,041 years. The new estimate is once every 19,608 years.
That kind of change was typical. Out of 104 reactors, the risk estimate declined at only eight. (There were 19 for which no older estimate was available for comparison.)
The increase in risk is so rapid that an NRC research task force in September sent two recommendations to NRC management:
First, it is time to move the issue over from the research staff to the regulatory staff, moving from study to action.
Second, start figuring out whether some nuclear power plants need a "backfit," or additional construction to protect them from earthquakes.
Another indication of how fast the risk estimates rose: The median, or middle value out of all 104 reactors, a measure of the risk at the typical plant, is now at a 1 in 74,176 chance each year of core damage from a quake. In the old estimate, it was 1 in 263,158. In other words, the estimated risk, though still low by NRC standards, has more than tripled.
What happens next?
This NRC process began in 2005 when its staff recommended taking a look at updated seismic hazards. It was late 2008 before NRC staff started working with a contractor, Electric Power Research Institute, on the design of a study. Overall, it took five years and three months from the staff recommendation until the seismic task force submitted its report in August 2010.
One problem is a lack of data about the nuclear reactors themselves. The NRC task force said the agency has detailed data on what it calls plant fragility - the probability that the expected earthquake would damage the reactor's core - for only one-third of the nation's nuclear plants. That's because only the plants that had been thought to be in areas of higher seismic risk had done detailed studies. For the rest, the scientists had to estimate from other information submitted by plant operators.
Now the NRC is playing catch-up.
An NRC spokesman, Scott Burnell, said Tuesday that the NRC is preparing a letter to send to certain nuclear plants, asking them for the more detailed data on equipment, soil conditions and seismic preparedness. Then the plants and NRC staff will have an opportunity to analyze that data.
That process could stretch into 2012, Burnell said. Then the NRC will have to decide, he said, "where the ability to respond to seismic events can be improved."
In the middle of that process, perhaps late this year, a new round of geologic data will come out. That will be folded into new calculations.
Industry is "addressing that issue"
The nuclear power industry is watching this process. A document distributed to the public by the industry's Nuclear Energy Institute on Sunday, after the Japanese plant emergency began, referred to this NRC study and the possibility of changes, saying, "The industry is working with the NRC to develop a methodology for addressing that issue."
The industry statement did not mention that the study increased the estimates of earthquake risk for nearly every nuclear power plant in the U.S.
(One of the leading nuclear power companies, General Electric, which designed the reactors at Fukushima, is a part owner of NBCUniversal, which co-owns msnbc.com through a joint venture with Microsoft.)
Good odds or bad?
How much risk is too much? Is a roller coaster safe only if no one ever dies? If one passenger dies every 100 years? Every year?
When the NRC saw that the new earthquake maps had pushed the level of risk into the range between 1 in 100,000 and the more likely 1 in 10,000, that change was enough to study the issue further, the task force said in its report. But because the risks didn't go beyond 1 in 10,000, "there was no immediate concern regarding adequate protection." The new estimates put Indian River right at that boundary, and a few others in reach.
By comparison, the chance of winning the grand prize in the next Powerball lottery: 1 in 195,249,054.
List of all 104 reactors in America at the source...
Source
More caution advised at Indian Point; Rep, Assemblywoman want relicense denied
BUCHANAN - As Japan continues to struggle with the aftermath of an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plant explosions and fires spewing radioactive material into the atmosphere, more public officials are calling for more caution at the Indian Point nuclear power plants in Buchanan.
State Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee (D- Rockland) Wednesday said she would introduce a resolution opposing the relicensing of Indian Point.
"This is in response to, obviously, clearly the explosions in Japan at the power stations, certainly intensify our fears regarding that a similar at Indian Point could result in even far more disastrous results," she said.
Jaffee is also recommending that a commission be formed to consider alternative means of energy production.
State Senator David Carlucci (D- Rockland, Orange) called on Indian Point to make all safety reports available to the public as well as their earthquake contingency plan.
"I have been working with energy suppliers and other government officials to find a solution that is safer for our community and our environment, but until a solution is found we must hold Indian Point to the highest of safety standards," he said.
On the federal level, Congressman Eliot Engel (D- Westchester,Rockland) renewed his call for the NRC to deny Indian Point's license renewal.
Engel said he is not opposed to nuclear power, only Indian Point because it is 24 miles from the New York City border, has 25 million people living within a 50 mile radius of it, and for the people of Westchester and Rockland counties, "there are not enough roads to allow a real evacuation in the event of an accident or an attack."
Source.
Hoping I haven't done anything wrong. This is close to home for me. They've been having problems with Indian Point for quite a few years now and there have been so many attempts to close the station.
So much for San Andreas: Reactors in East, Midwest, South have highest chance of damage
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 pro-nuclear commenter on msnbc.com 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.
And it turns out that 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 the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, a four-hour drive down the Pacific coast at San Clemente, surrounded by fault lines on land and under the ocean.
It's not on the Pacific Coast at all. It's on the Hudson River.
One in 10,000
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 provided to msnbc.com.
A ranking of the 104 nuclear reactors is shown at the bottom of this article, listing the NRC estimate of risk of catastrophic failure caused by earthquake.
The chance of a core damage from a quake at Indian Point 3 is estimated at 1 in 10,000 each year. Under NRC guidelines, that's right on the verge of requiring "immediate concern regarding adequate protection" of the public. The two reactors at Indian Point generate up to one-third of the electricity for New York City. The second reactor, Indian Point 2, doesn't rate as risky, with 1 chance in 30,303 each year.
The plant with the second highest risk? It's in Massachusetts. Third? Pennsylvania. Then Tennessee, Pennsylvania again, Florida, Virginia and South Carolina. Only then does California's Diablo Canyon appear on the list, followed by Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island.
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.
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.
Playing the odds
The NRC, the federal agency responsible for nuclear power safety, says the odds are in the public's favor. "Operating nuclear power plants are safe," the NRC said when it reported the new risk estimates.
Every plant is designed with a margin of safety beyond the strongest earthquake anticipated in that area, the NRC says.
But the NRC also says the margin of safety has been reduced.
In the 35 years since Indian Point 3 got its license to operate in 1976, the same era when most of today's U.S. nuclear reactors were built, geologists have learned a lot about the dangers of earthquakes in the eastern and central U.S.
No one alive now has memories of the South Carolina quakes of 1886, which toppled 14,000 chimneys in Charleston and were felt in 30 states. Or the New Madrid quakes of 1811-1812 in Missouri and Arkansas - the big one made the Mississippi River run backward for a time.
But the geologists and seismologists remember, learning their history from rocks, and steadily raising their estimates of the risk of severe quakes. New faults are found, and new computer models change predictions for how the ground shakes. The latest estimates are drawn from the 2008 maps of the U.S. Geological Survey. Of special note, the USGS said, was an allowance for waves of large earthquakes in the New Madrid fault area roughly centered on the Missouri Bootheel, as well as inclusion of offshore faults near Charleston, S.C., and new data from the mountains of East Tennessee. With each new map, the areas of negligible risks have receded.
Based on those new maps, the NRC published in August 2010 new estimates of the earthquake risk at nuclear power reactors in the eastern and central states. Besides the proximity, severity and frequency of earthquakes, the new estimates take into account the design standards used at each plant, along with the type of rock or soil it's built on. This week, the NRC provided additional data to msnbc.com for the relatively few reactors in the Western states, allowing a ranking to be made of all 104 reactors with the latest data.
The top 10
Here are the 10 nuclear power sites with the highest risk of suffering core damage from an earthquake, showing their NRC risk estimates based on 2008 and 1989 geological data.
1. Indian Point 3, Buchanan, N.Y.: 1 in 10,000 chance each year. Old estimate: 1 in 17,241. Increase in risk: 72 percent.
2. Pilgrim 1, Plymouth, Mass.: 1 in 14,493. Old estimate: 1 in 125,000. Increase in risk: 763 percent.
3. Limerick 1 and 2, Limerick, Pa.: 1 in 18,868. Old estimate: 1 in 45,455. Increase in risk: 141 percent.
4. Sequoyah 1 and 2, Soddy-Daisy, Tenn.: 1 in 19,608. Old estimate: 1 in 102,041. Increase in risk: 420 percent.
5. Beaver Valley 1, Shippingport, Pa.: 1 in 20,833. Old estimate: 1 in 76,923. Increase in risk: 269 percent.
6. Saint Lucie 1 and 2, Jensen Beach, Fla.: 1 in 21,739. Old estimate: N/A.
7. North Anna 1 and 2, Louisa, Va.: 1 in 22,727. Old estimate: 1 in 31,250. Increase in risk: 38 percent.
8. Oconee 1, 2 and 3, Seneca, S.C.: 1 in 23,256. Old estimate: 1 in 100,000. Increase in risk: 330 percent.
9. Diablo Canyon 1 and 2, Avila Beach, Calif.: 1 in 23,810. Old estimate: N/A.
10. Three Mile Island, Middletown, Pa.: 1 in 25,000. Old estimate: 1 in 45,455. Increase in risk: 82 percent.
(This short list of the top 10 sites, or plants, groups together reactors at the same site if they have the same risk rating, such as Sequoyah 1 and 2. The full list of 104 separate reactors is below at the bottom of the text.)
A rising risk
Northeast of Chattanooga, Tenn., the Tennessee Valley Authority's Sequoyah 1 and 2 nuclear plants had been thought to have a risk of core damage from an earthquake happening once every 102,041 years. The new estimate is once every 19,608 years.
That kind of change was typical. Out of 104 reactors, the risk estimate declined at only eight. (There were 19 for which no older estimate was available for comparison.)
The increase in risk is so rapid that an NRC research task force in September sent two recommendations to NRC management:
First, it is time to move the issue over from the research staff to the regulatory staff, moving from study to action.
Second, start figuring out whether some nuclear power plants need a "backfit," or additional construction to protect them from earthquakes.
Another indication of how fast the risk estimates rose: The median, or middle value out of all 104 reactors, a measure of the risk at the typical plant, is now at a 1 in 74,176 chance each year of core damage from a quake. In the old estimate, it was 1 in 263,158. In other words, the estimated risk, though still low by NRC standards, has more than tripled.
What happens next?
This NRC process began in 2005 when its staff recommended taking a look at updated seismic hazards. It was late 2008 before NRC staff started working with a contractor, Electric Power Research Institute, on the design of a study. Overall, it took five years and three months from the staff recommendation until the seismic task force submitted its report in August 2010.
One problem is a lack of data about the nuclear reactors themselves. The NRC task force said the agency has detailed data on what it calls plant fragility - the probability that the expected earthquake would damage the reactor's core - for only one-third of the nation's nuclear plants. That's because only the plants that had been thought to be in areas of higher seismic risk had done detailed studies. For the rest, the scientists had to estimate from other information submitted by plant operators.
Now the NRC is playing catch-up.
An NRC spokesman, Scott Burnell, said Tuesday that the NRC is preparing a letter to send to certain nuclear plants, asking them for the more detailed data on equipment, soil conditions and seismic preparedness. Then the plants and NRC staff will have an opportunity to analyze that data.
That process could stretch into 2012, Burnell said. Then the NRC will have to decide, he said, "where the ability to respond to seismic events can be improved."
In the middle of that process, perhaps late this year, a new round of geologic data will come out. That will be folded into new calculations.
Industry is "addressing that issue"
The nuclear power industry is watching this process. A document distributed to the public by the industry's Nuclear Energy Institute on Sunday, after the Japanese plant emergency began, referred to this NRC study and the possibility of changes, saying, "The industry is working with the NRC to develop a methodology for addressing that issue."
The industry statement did not mention that the study increased the estimates of earthquake risk for nearly every nuclear power plant in the U.S.
(One of the leading nuclear power companies, General Electric, which designed the reactors at Fukushima, is a part owner of NBCUniversal, which co-owns msnbc.com through a joint venture with Microsoft.)
Good odds or bad?
How much risk is too much? Is a roller coaster safe only if no one ever dies? If one passenger dies every 100 years? Every year?
When the NRC saw that the new earthquake maps had pushed the level of risk into the range between 1 in 100,000 and the more likely 1 in 10,000, that change was enough to study the issue further, the task force said in its report. But because the risks didn't go beyond 1 in 10,000, "there was no immediate concern regarding adequate protection." The new estimates put Indian River right at that boundary, and a few others in reach.
By comparison, the chance of winning the grand prize in the next Powerball lottery: 1 in 195,249,054.
List of all 104 reactors in America at the source...
Source
More caution advised at Indian Point; Rep, Assemblywoman want relicense denied
BUCHANAN - As Japan continues to struggle with the aftermath of an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plant explosions and fires spewing radioactive material into the atmosphere, more public officials are calling for more caution at the Indian Point nuclear power plants in Buchanan.
State Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee (D- Rockland) Wednesday said she would introduce a resolution opposing the relicensing of Indian Point.
"This is in response to, obviously, clearly the explosions in Japan at the power stations, certainly intensify our fears regarding that a similar at Indian Point could result in even far more disastrous results," she said.
Jaffee is also recommending that a commission be formed to consider alternative means of energy production.
State Senator David Carlucci (D- Rockland, Orange) called on Indian Point to make all safety reports available to the public as well as their earthquake contingency plan.
"I have been working with energy suppliers and other government officials to find a solution that is safer for our community and our environment, but until a solution is found we must hold Indian Point to the highest of safety standards," he said.
On the federal level, Congressman Eliot Engel (D- Westchester,Rockland) renewed his call for the NRC to deny Indian Point's license renewal.
Engel said he is not opposed to nuclear power, only Indian Point because it is 24 miles from the New York City border, has 25 million people living within a 50 mile radius of it, and for the people of Westchester and Rockland counties, "there are not enough roads to allow a real evacuation in the event of an accident or an attack."
Source.
Hoping I haven't done anything wrong. This is close to home for me. They've been having problems with Indian Point for quite a few years now and there have been so many attempts to close the station.