Japan's nuclear crisis continues to unfold in semi-slow motion, with the danger of a major release of radioactivity affecting thousands of people still imminent. And this in a country that was supposedly as ready for a major quake as any, from its building codes to its energy infrastructure.
There is already much well-justified discussion of whether this disaster will affect nuclear power plans in the United States, whether it ends up resembling Three-Mile Island or Chernobyl. With that in mind, it seemed worth simply looking at existing U.S. nuclear facilities and how they might be at risk. First, sites of all 104 reactors currently operating in this country:
Then, the most recent map of earthquakes recorded by the U.S. Geological Survey in the past seven days:
Let's zoom in on California, which seems to be the main at-risk spot. I added the sites of the two active nuclear facilities in the state, Diablo Canyon and San Onofre:
Both nuclear facilities are on the coast, just as the Fukushima plant in Japan is. The USGS also provides probability maps, basically estimates of how much the ground will shake in a given area for a given magnitude of quake. Take a look at all the red down the California coast:
As some policy makers urge a quick slowdown on any nuclear plans, though, regulators say that U.S. plants can withstand even the worst natural disasters. "All our plants are designed to withstand significant natural phenomena, like earthquakes, tornadoes, and tsunamis," NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko said during a press briefing at the White House. And the Diablo Canyon plant does sit along the Shoreline Fault, but apparently it is a lower-risk fault and probably wouldn't produce a quake bigger than 6.5 in magnitude (compare to 9.0 for the Japan quake).
Still, chances are good that the Japanese authorities thought their plants could withstand disasters as well. Given the devastation in California that some predict is virtually inevitable within the next 30 years, the reassessment that nuclear power will now undergo is undoubtedly worthwhile.
