Guys, If any of you are Americans maybe you can put in a good word for the rest of the world. The word is... shut down all the nuclear plants along the sanandreas fault... please.... she's gonna BLOW. Japan has done enough damage to last thousands of years and alll the living beings on this earth will be sickened. I am sad. There are better ways to harness power... please use them instead. Jeees... california, wake up and smelll the radiation!!!

now I'm going to soak my head in shame that I am human.

I don't know where to start...


The most at-risk plant isn't even on the West Coast - it's the Indian Point Energy Center on the Hudson River.


It's at Indian Point in Buchanan, N.Y and has the highest risk of core damage in the event of an earthquake according to NRC . At a 1 in 10,000 chance of core breach, that's right on the verge of what the NRC calls "immediate concern regarding adequate protection."

The second plant on the list is Pilgrim 1 in Massachusetts. Number three is in Pennsylvania.

The only West Coast plant in the top ten of the anger list is Diablo Canyon in California at number nine.



So I would worry more about our friends on the East coast if you want to be reactionary.


Actually... I would worry more about the leak from the Ontario nuclear plant on 14th March 2011 - that's when Ontario Power Generation notified Canada's federal nuclear regulator about the release of 73,000 litres of demineralized water into Lake Ontario from a leak.

So... back to California.

It's widely understood that the Japanese meltdowns (Completely the wrong word, but hey, they all mean catastrofuck.) were basically down to the control rods that deployed correctly to halt nuclear reactions... however the cooling mechanism requires electricity to work properly and the plants had none - because backup generators were destroyed by the tsunami.

Now, California doesn't have Tsunami's. If we go under the assumption that the concrete bunkers to protect the plants from Tsunami's California doesn't have work OK, everything is as safe as the engineering behind the safety measure.


So, in essence I wouldn't worry about California anymore that I would worry about Quebec, New York, England or anywhere for that matter.


Sure, I understand concern over nuclear power but reactionary thinking really doesn't help anyone.

It's not as if California or anywhere can just switch off Nuclear power (By the way, you can't actually switch off a nuclear power plant. Google it.) because there isn't anything efficient enough to replace it. There isn't even anything efficient enough to replace that thick black stuff being carried around the ocean by irresponsible power companies to make our cars go 'Vroom!'.

Well, there is... but it's generated by nuclear power plants.

It doesn't matter how much people shout about nuclear power, getting rid of it isn't as easy as people seems to think. It's hugely political, has immense financial problems (More expensive to burn coal... plus it's a finite resource like oil - and wind, tide and solar are not viable technology wise yet).

I actually drive by a large wind farm in California every week (In my petrol powered car...), but the tragedy is how the actual power companies are treading over the concept. I'm not arguing there are better, cleaner and safer ways of generating/harnessing energy out there... just that reactionary pointing at California is largely pointless, as well as inaccurate in terms of being number one on the imminent danger list.

One of my engineering professors made a statement in his class the morning after the Loma Prieta (San Francisco) quake of 1989, that the one place he would rather be in an earthquake IS a nuclear power plant.

In fact, he was in California the week before, serving as an adviser for the California Earthquake Design Board Conference. He has stayed in the hotel where the water tower fell, and also the one across the street that suffered NO damage (not even a cracked wall!). He should know, because he had been involved in earthquake engineering since the Alaskan quake of 1964.

I would agree that we simply cannot shut them down until we find and build alternative, reliable sources of power. I would add to that, that shutting down the reactor does not eliminate all risks. The fuel is still radioactive, and we really don't have a good way to dispose of it, or a safer place to store it. For now, all we can do is study the risks, deal with them as best we can, and keep working on alternatives.

I've always been one for conservation. Installing LED light bulbs might let us take some dirty coal plants off line. Coal is much more damaging and deadly (statistically speaking) than nuclear fission. Also, I have a solar water heater that heats all of the water I need for my household. It's a very low tech device and it's pretty darned efficient. Until we develop affordable, reliable, sustainable, and clean alternatives, there are ways we can cut our energy usage without turning to extreme austerity measures.