Could Fukushima Daiichi Be Ground Zero for the Next Big One?

Other than the usual fear mongering articles you find all over the web, I found a detailed seismological scientific study from the European Geoscience Union E G U that made some rather alarming findings. I'll quote from the article:

The heft from last year’s powerful March 11 earthquake shocked a sleeping fault line close to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant back to life, according to a new scientific study. And based on their findings, the scientists who conducted the study warn the battered nuclear power plant should brace itself for another big one.

And they go on to say:

The real problem may be the fluids forming as a result of the Pacific plate digging under the adjacent Okhotsk plate. Japan’s northern region lies directly above the Okhotsk plate.

You can read the article on the Wall Streets Journal Blog or read the study directly on the EGU homepage

I really do hope they stabilize the fuel pool of Unit IV in a sufficient manner soon. If that's possible at all.

Although prior warning is always of some sort of benefit, I have to ask, how exactly one would go about protecting a nuclear reactor from sustained assault from a reactivated, dormant faultline. We like to go over the events of quakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunami, typhoons and super storms, because we learn by examination. Because by learning, we overcome, we obsess, and observe obsessively over these events, in a vain attempt to predict the worst case scenario.

The fact of the matter is that the danger these quakes pose directly is minimal, insignificant in the face of the danger that potential tsunami waves, triggered by the fault, may pose. From that threat, there is no defence, no action that can deny the sea any land it should choose to conquer, no structure that can be erected as a surefire protection from the oceanic fury that would be unleashed in a scenario that echoes the events that lead to the last disaster at the Daiichi plant.

The only thing that the technicians at those sites can do, to prevent a further endangerment of the world, and more locally, the people of Japan, is to completely dismantle the sites that were damaged, and not in forty years time, but in four. If that means building armoured hazard suits, capable of fending off the stupendously dangerous levels of radioactivity that an operative might come into contact with when working to such a timeline, then that is what it will take, and that is what must happen.

There can be no half measures, no corperate complaining about accounting, and costs and man hours of labour spent. This must just be done, and that is an end to it.

There is only one other alternative that MIGHT be viable, depending on the type of reactors involved, and the fuel they were using. There is a woman in the states, a scientist, dealing with radiological saftey and threat reduction. She made a substance that when applied to uranium, turns it into the radiologically inert uranite. If her work can be industrialised and put into mass production, then the safety concerns that the damaged plants represent, might be able to be negated, without the need for furious, frenzied human activity, around one of the worlds most dangerous working environments.

Outside of that, the options are basically , fix this, or die from it. It will not be the quaking that does the real damage, that poses the real danger, but the possibility of a repeat performance of the original incident at Fukushima.

Let's see how to brace a building against severe earthquakes 101

1) Base Isolators under the building
2) enclose the reactor itself in a tune mass damper system.
3) place the reactor building on stilts (not actual stilts but something that looks akin to them) so that if the building had to come down, it would come down straight with minimal loss of structural integrity.

hmm... there are a few other ways to brace out a building but those are the three big ways.

reply to post by vkey08


As far as I understand it, the spent fuel pool in rector IV is the main problem, so it might be wiser to remove the pool instead of trying to support or strengthen a crumbling building.

And let's not forget the sister-plant located just 7 miles up the coast, the Daini ( sic? ) plant.

When the epicenter is indeed around Fukushima and the magnitude is comparable to last years, the problems will become even more severe.