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"The east coast earthquake hit on August 23rd this year. The damage to roads and homes and offices was not catastrophic except in some very specific locations. However, the epicenter was 12 miles away from the North Anna Nuclear Plant in Louisa County Virginia and because of the earthquake, the plant had to shut down. That is the first time that's ever happened to any nuclear plant in the country. They've never before had to shut one down before a quake. Well ten weeks after that August earthquake, the North Anna Nuclear Plant is still not back up and running.
When that plant shut down we were first told it was shut down because it was knocked off the electrical grid when power went out in the area due to the quake. Turns out that was not true. We've since learned that the North Anna Plant shut down because of all the shaking from the earthquake. It was only after the plant shut down because of all the shaking, that the electrical power went off. And eight seconds after the electrical power went off, the generators kicked in, three diesel generators kicked in. One of the four generators at the North Anna Plant tried to kick in and failed.
Right now the rule for American nuclear power plants is that they have to have backup generator capabilities for four hours before off site power is restored. Here's my question. What if it takes more than four hours to get the power back on? Remember, if can you cannot keep the power on, if your diesel generators aren't running to keep the cooling system going, if you can't keep the cooling system on, Fukushima.
I know there is no sex scandal or partisan advantage here but for the record, today we learned that, okay the headline in the Associated Press calls it a glitch, but check this out. Utility officials say gas from inside the Fukushima plant's No. 2 reactor indicated the presence of radioactive xenon which could be the byproduct of unexpected nuclear fission. This is happening now, today at Fukushima. Unexpected nuclear fission. Nuclear fission as in the very thing emergency crews were trying to prevent in the meltdown of Fukushima because a small burst of fission could trigger a much larger nuclear reaction. That's still going on.
Here in the United States in just the last couple months, in addition to the earthquake damaged North Anna Plant which is still not online, the Palisades Nuclear Plant in southwestern Michigan was shut down for a week because a mechanical fault led to a small release of radioactive tritium into the air. This is the same plant shut down in September because it lost water in its cooling system. At a plant in Georgia, in Baxley Georgia, they found radioactive water, tritium again, leaking out of the plant. The Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire shut down automatically after a faulty water pump caused a low water level in its steam generator. After three weeks of being online [sic], it is just now being turned on again. At a plant in Ohio, more cracks were found this week in the concrete shield building that's supposed to protect the plant from wind and tornadoes. The plant's been shut down since October 1st because of previously discovered cracks. Those cracks were found accidentally when the plant's owners were doing some unrelated renovations. And yesterday, a nonradioactive ammonia leak at the San Onofre Nuclear Plant in California set off alarms and caused a partial evacuation of the plant.
On top of all that, the General Electric Corporation, hi boss, says that the 35 nuclear reactors that it built over the last 40 years from New York all the way down to Washington may not shut down properly during an earthquake. The company is recommending testing now to determine how much of a jolt it would take to stop the nuclear fission process during an earthquake in one of those plants. They're recommendation additional testing, 40 years after making them, because we don't know the answer to that yet.
Some of these plants are 40 years old. These plants are all 40 years old. And we're just now getting around to figuring out how big a quake would turn them from a disaster into a catastrophe. All of our nuclear plants being decades old and constantly subject to poorly understood and unprecedented mechanical failure is not the kind of scandal that involves sexy things like reality show stars getting divorced after 72 days of matrimony or regulators shtooping lobbyists or drugs be snorted on household appliances. But some day this stuff, this nuclear plant stuff, is going to drive me nuts enough that I'm going to send cocaine-laden divorce papers without a prenup up to Indian Point in the hopes of getting somebody outraged."
So I'm not sure how bad some of this is. Nonradioactive ammonia leaks don't sound that bad and a partial evacuation could just be a prudent standard operating procedure. But the issue with earthquakes does sound bad, and after my sister just went 50 hours without power after a snowstorm, a four hour backup battery supply does sound inadequate. But Maddow didn't connect a few other things that I've come across lately.
Reuters reported Natural Gas Firm Says Shale Fracking Caused UK Earthquakes "Shale gas exploration triggered small earthquakes near Blackpool in northwest England earlier this year, UK firm Cuadrilla Resources said, adding to concerns about the safety of a technology that is transforming U.S. energy markets."
The report says ""It is highly probable that the hydraulic fracturing of Cuadrilla's Preese Hall-1 well did trigger a number of minor seismic events." Apparently the events were 2.3 and 1.5 on the Richter scale and the site's geological features are rare which would make it unlikely that at other sites there would be quakes caused. Ars Technica has more details.
Brian Williams' new show Rock Central had a segment about how there are tons of jobs in North Dakota because of the new booming oil industry there because of all the fracking. EarthJustice has a map shading "areas of active and potential natural gas drilling and fracking"
I know there's a lot of controversy over fracking and I've seen the movie Gasland. Usually the complaints about fracking are about the (underregulated) chemicals used and the affect on the water supply. The video of someone lighting their water faucet on fire is certainly compelling. The EPA is studying it with reports due out in several years. But I hadn't heard the earthquake issue before.
The USGS says "Earthquakes induced by human activity have been documented in a few locations in the United States, Japan, and Canada. The cause was injection of fluids into deep wells for waste disposal and secondary recovery of oil, and the use of reservoirs for water supplies. Most of these earthquakes were minor. The largest and most widely known resulted from fluid injection at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver, Colorado. In 1967, an earthquake of magnitude 5.5 followed a series of smaller earthquakes. Injection had been discontinued at the site in the previous year once the link between the fluid injection and the earlier series of earthquakes was established. "
So look at that map of fracking sites. Remember the unusual east coast earthquake in August? It was centered in Virgina. Well wikipedia tells me I'm not the first one to put these two together and that the USGS doesn't think it could have caused the Virginia quake. Fair enough, I'm happy to have that idea disproved.
But, we have all these 40 year old nuclear power plants that I'm sure were built in areas of low seismic activity. Well I know the Indian Point plant in NY was built on a fault line and there are some in California. Conveniently, the sunlight foundation has made a map of nuclear plants and fault lines.
Regardless, the idea that lots of fracking could cause even small seismic events in areas that might not otherwise have them is kind of disturbing. If I think that those areas might have been low seismic activity areas and might have been chosen as sites for nuclear plants it's certainly more alarming. I don't mean to be alarmist or generate stupid internet fears, but I'm sure 40 years ago, nuclear plant designers didn't factor in fracking and I want to know what they now think of it.
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