Indians and Pilgrims are at it again.

[cailte]

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 damageWhat 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.

Comments

[telemann]

Some of these plants are near the end of their life expectancy. I know the one in Oyster Point near New York is-- and there's one in Ohio. The power industry is seeking to have these plants re-licensed, the issue is that metal suffers fatigue from exposure to radiation and becomes more and more inclined to be brittle and crack. I know the Oyster Bay plant, they also want to run it at 120 percent of capacity.

It's insane what's going on, and it's like no one cares. :/

[thelilyqueen]

Agreed. And if, heaven forbid, anything does happen you know how quick they'll be to don sack cloth and ashes and wail that these things just can't be predicted; things happen...

[telemann]

Yeah, then blame evil liberal tree huggers for it in the same breath (e.g. TOO MANY REGULATIONS!).

[firerosearien]

Cuomo, NY's governor, has said he's not inclined to renew the license, so there's that, at least.

[mollywobbles867]

4. Sequoyah 1 and 2, Soddy-Daisy, Tenn.: 1 in 19,608. Old estimate: 1 in 102,041. Increase in risk: 420 percent.

Oh. I mean, who knows when the last big earthquake was around here. I'm hoping it was like 5000 years ago instead of 19,607.5 years or something. Hopefully by the next earthquake around here, we will have finally gone to wind, sun, and garbage energy. And the plants will be buried under water or whatever it is they do to non-functioning nuclear plants.

[devil_ad_vocate]

OMG! A 1 in 74,176 chance? ARMAGEDDON IS IMMINENT! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

Oh, wait... how many melt-downs have we had? And how does the frequency of petrochemical plant/pipeline explosions and burning coal mines compare with that.

[ms_maree]

That's why they have risk analysis

[thepikey]

(beat me to it, and in more detail as well. bah! I'll get you, and your little dog, too! etc.)

[ms_maree]

My work does a little bit of this, but nothing on the scale of 'nuclear meltdown' or 'dinosaur killing rocks falling from the sky' it mostly factors things in like cyclones, flooding, infrastructure damage.

But it's all pretty basic, there is the probability and there is the consequences - and ratio is important.

But what does humans in, I think, is benefits. There are some things which have huge benefits, and those probabilities are so low that even factoring in the huge consequences of a failure the temptation is too much.

Which is why we do have nuclear power plants.

[lickety_split]

And California dodges being in imminent peril once more!

[romp]

except for Diablo Canyon

[romp]

There's a map of quakes in Canada for the last 400 years which shows nuclear power plants. Given that the fault Juan de Fuca fault is considered locked and a 9.0 is possible, those 3 plants in Washington look uncomfortably close. But what do I know.

[skellington1]

The info on the map regarding Washington is incorrect -- only one of the listed plants is operating. Trojan (actually in Oregon, right on the border) was shut down in 93, and totally deconstructed by 06 (I think spent fuel is still there), as was one of the commercial plants en eastern washington. The only plant still operating in WA is a single reactor at the Hanford site.

Of course, the hanford site is a giant desert full of radioactive war-time suck, but my understanding is that it's more of a groundwater risk than an airborne one, even in an earthquake (lots of burried material in tanks of variable quality). So you should sleep easy if you're in BC.

(I'm down in Washington, and I've been looking into this a lot in the last few days).

[romp]

Thanks for the info. And the update about Trojan. I remember it being a concern right after 9/11.