Tsunamis and Nuclear Power Plants (you should probably read this) [View All]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/123004W.shtml

Tsunamis and Nuclear Power Plants
By Russell D. Hoffman
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Tuesday 28 December 2004

More than 60,000 people are dead. Bodies wash ashore in a dozen countries. A train, loaded with a thousand passengers and their luggage, is swept away, engine, tracks, and all. Cars, trucks, buses, and boats are pushed more than a mile inland by the rushing water. Some of the waves were reported to be 40 feet high.

The ocean in San Diego, 1/2 a world away, rose 10 inches. It IS a small world, after all.

The "sea wall" at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station ("SONGS") in Southern California is 35 feet tall, and about 35 years old. It could not have withstood Sunday's worst.

San Onofre's twin reactors were theoretically designed to withstand an earthquake up to 7.0, which is 100 times smaller than a 9.0 earthquake. Although a 9.0 earthquake is considered "unlikely" near San Onofre, it is hardly impossible. In addition, the size of the earthquake doesn't necessarily relate to the size of the ensuing tsunami. Landslides triggered by earthquakes, asteroid impacts, and volcanic eruptions can generate waves hundreds of feet tall.

Why did we build nuclear power plants near the ocean, anyway, where they are susceptible to underwater and surface attacks by terrorists and other belligerents? Because nuclear power plants need enormous quantities of water for their cooling systems, and water - especially in the western United States - is usually difficult to find except along the shoreline. The outflow from a nuclear power plant is always slightly contaminated with radioactive particles, and sometimes severely so; people don't want to drink that. So they put the plants near the oceans whenever possible.

Don't worry about tsunamis, they said - we've built you this puny little wall. Don't worry about asteroid impacts - they hardly ever happen. Don't worry about tornados or hurricanes. Don't worry about human error. So, society agreed to these poisonous cauldrons of bubbling radioactivity - these behemoths of death-rays ready to burst - these sitting ducks on our shorelines.

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