Had the massive 8.9 Richter-scale earthquake that has just savaged Japan hit instead off the California coast, it could have ripped apart at least four coastal reactors and sent a lethal cloud of radiation across the entire United States.
Had the massive 8.9 Richter-scale earthquake that has just savaged Japan hit instead off the California coast, it could have ripped apart at least four coastal reactors and sent a lethal cloud of radiation across the entire United States.
It is not yet clear what damage may yet be done by the resulting tsunamis. Early estimates have put the size of the first of them at as high as 10 meters. The first and many succeeding waves are expected to hit land at Hawaii and throughout the Pacific rim.
It remains possible that residual geological instability could still cause damaging tremors along the California coast.
The two huge reactors each at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon are entirely incapable of standing up to such a powerful earthquake. All four are extremely close to major faults. By orders of magnitude, none are designed to withstand shock waves as powerful as have been generated by this quake.
Depending on the size of the tsunami generated, the reactors---all four located relatively low to the coast----could also be flooded, again causing horrific radiation releases into the air and water.
San Onofre is located between San Diego and Los Angeles. A radioactive cloud spewing from one or both reactors there would do incalculable damage to either or both urban areas before carrying over the rest of southern and central California.
Diablo Canyon is located at Avila Beach, on the coast just west of San Luis Obispo, between Los Angeles and San Francisco. A radioactive cloud released there would pour into central California and, depending on the winds, up to the Bay Area or southeast into Santa Barbara and then to Los Angeles. The cloud would at very least permanently destroy much of the region on which most Americans rely for their winter supply of fresh vegetables.
By the federal Price-Anderson Act of 1957, the owners of the destroyed reactors---including Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison---would be covered by private insurance only up to $11 billion, a tiny fraction of the trillions of dollars worth of damage that would be done. The rest would become the responsibility of the federal taxpayer and the individuals who suffer the actual destruction. Virtually all homeowner insurance policies in the United States exempt the insurers from liability from a reactor disaster.
More importantly, the death toll would be incalculable. The most definitive recent study of the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl reactor puts the death toll at 985,000. This accident happened in an impoverished, remote rural area. The nearest city, Kiev, is 80 kilometers away.
By contrast, San Luis Obispo is less than ten miles from Diablo Canyon, and directly downwind. The region downwind from San Onofre has become heavily suburbanized.
Heavy radioactive fallout spread from Chernobyl blanketed all of Europe within a matter of days. The area irradiated was larger than the United States. Fallout in fact carried into the jet stream and arrived on the coast of California, thousands of miles away, within ten days. It then carried all the way across the northern tier of the United States.
Chernobyl Unit Four was of comparable size to the two reactors at Diablo Canyon, and somewhat larger than the two at San Onofre. But it was very new at the time it exploded. The four California coastal reactors have been operating since the 1970s and 1980s and have thus accumulated much larger internal burdens of radioactive materials. Major releases at any of the four could exceed what was spewed at Chernobyl.
Japanese officials are currently asserting that four reactors in the Tohoku region automatically shut, and that there were no radiation releases. But such announcements are not reliable. In 2007 a smaller earthquake rocked the seven-reactor Kashiwazaki site and forced its lengthy shut-down.
Japan has some 55 commercial reactors, all of them within seismic danger zones.
In 1986 the Perry nuclear plant, east of Cleveland, was rocked by a 5.5 Richter-scale shock, many orders of magnitude weaker than the one that has just hit Japan. That quake broke pipes and other key equipment within the plant, as well as taking out nearby roads and bridges. The reactor had not yet opened. An Ohio gubernatorial commission later determined that evacuation in the middle of such a quake would be impossible.
Other American reactors sit on or near earthquake faults in Missouri, New Hampshire, New York and elsewhere.
The Obama Administration is now asking Congress for $36 billion in new loan guarantees to build more commercial reactors. It has yet to share with the public its exact plans for dealing with a disaster on the scale of the ones that could be caused by an earthquake this size in California or elsewhere.
It has also yet to disclose where it has stashed the cash reserves needed to cover the liability that would not be covered by the utilities that own the reactors.
As the whole world watches Japan dig out from this catastrophe, we Americans might contemplate what could have happened here---and may yet.
The only good aftershock of this disaster would be a decision to end the horrific gamble being waged with the continued operation of these apocalyptic disasters waiting to happen.
Not to mention the tragic attempt to soak taxpayers for still more of them.