US Nukes and US Geographic Faults

Nukes and US Faults

I find it interesting that, for something as supposedly safe as nuclear power is supposed to be, how little is really known about its "safety".

Here's what I mean...

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent article here on safety zones surrounding US reactors.  In the US there is a 10 mile "evacuation zone" around each of the 100 or so nuclear power plants.  This zone, based on a 1978 report on possible melt down scenarios, is the radius around the plant that would have to be cleared.

Now, interestingly, that zone was barely enough even in Japan - where the US recommended a 50 mile radius.

Now why is a 50 mile radius good in Japan for US citizens but not here in our own country?

I have no statistics but I would guess that a very significant percentage of the US urban population lives within 25 to 50 miles of a nuclear plant.  So, given any type of situation like that in Japan, it would be very, very hard to evacuate everyone.

For example, I used to live in New York City.  The Indian Point nuclear plant is located about 35 miles up the Hudson River from Manhattan.  According to the article about 20 million people live within 50 miles of that plant.  Having seen the effect even a simple loss of power has on the city (watching tens of thousands of people walk across the Brooklyn Bridge) its hard to imagine what the effect of a serious nuclear problem would be.

Now you might say that NYC does not have earthquakes so what's the worry?

Well, you probably haven't heard of the New Madrid earthquake of 1812.  This earthquake was powerful enough to, according to eye witnesses, to cause the Mississippi River to run backwards for a while. 

However, there is one nuclear reactor very near the epicenter of this quake and many not far to the north in Illinois.

So are we safe?

Another interesting bit of data is that there are only simulations to tell us how nuclear fallout travels through the air and sea.   Since no one really knows and no one is likely to do any tests to find out (things like radioactive Iodine and Cesium are heavy) these "radii of safety" and just guesses.

That's right - your safety from nuclear fallout is just a guess.

And no one really knows where there might be another earthquake, e.g., southern Illinois.  Given the  unpredictability of earthquakes to begin with it seems very unlikely that any bureaucrat really has any good idea what's safe and what's not.

Its also clear from the recent warnings in Japan regarding radioactive Iodine-131 in Tokyo's water supply that the effects of fallout can reach far outside these radii.  For example, polluting water which will become useless for human consumption downstream.

Something that no one had predicted.

Unfortunately nuclear power's safety is not just questionable, its down right scary.

And then there is the issue of liability.  Companies like GE have worked hard to make the liability for nuclear disaster limited (see this).  What this means is that the risks of building these plants are ultimately carried by the taxpayers (what is not covered by the utilities insurance carrier).  So mistakes will be very costly for all of us.

So you really have to wonder about the safety of all this.

(Map is a composite of the WSJ nuke map and this USGS US Fault map.  After creating this I can see that Illinois, North and South Carolina, Louisiana, and the West Coast (California, Oregon and Washington state) are all potential problem spots...)