Nuke plant at quake's epicenter had seismographs removed due to budget cuts

Indian Point Energy Center

by Cliff Weathers

One of the two Virginia nuclear-powered plants that was shut down in the wake of yesterday's 5.9-magnitude earthquake had its seismographs removed as part of budget cutbacks, Raw Story is reporting.

And federal nuclear-safety officials acknowledge that the dual-reactor North Anna Power Station, which is near the quake's epicenter and sits on a fault line, had lost offsite power yesterday and had to use backup generators to help keep the nuclear material in the reactors cool.


North Anna ranks as the seventh nuclear power plant most likely to receive core damage from the effects of an earthquake and is reportedly built only to withstand an earthquake between 5.9 and 6.1 in magnitude. The Indian Point 3 reactor in nearby Westchester County, NY, has the highest probability, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

At the typical U.S. nuclear reactor, there's a 1 in 74,176 chance each year that the core could be damaged from the effects an earthquake (the effects of a secondary events, such as a tsunami are not calculated). But the chance of a core damage from a quake at Indian Point 3 is calculated to be a mere 1 in 10,000 each year.

And according to Nuclear Regulatory Commission specifications, that's dangling on the edge of what it deems having "immediate concern regarding adequate protection" of the public."

Recently, a seismologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory stated that the New York City area is past due for a significant earthquake. Won-Young Kim told Metro New York that “it can happen anytime soon,” and that “we can expect it any minute, we just don’t know when and where.”

The New York City area sits on top of the Ramapo Fault Zone, which spans more than 185 miles in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

A 2008 study by Lamont-Doherty argued that a magnitude 6 or 7 earthquake was destined to originate from the Ramapo Fault Zone. The study also discovered that there was an additional fault zone extending from the Ramapo Fault Zone into Southwestern Connecticut and running just one mile from the Indian Point plant.

However, Entergy Nuclear Northeast, which runs the plant,  frequently states that the reactors can withstand a significant earthquake.

The Indian Point 2 reactor is rated the 25th most susceptible to the effects of a significant earthquake with a 1 in 30,303 chance each year.