Monday, March 14, 2011

No Dang Fault Under Pickering Nuclear Power Plant

Article

The Pickering plant is believed to sit on a geological fault line. But officials at the province's publicly-owned utility say the risks are much smaller.

Ok, the CNSC and OPG have no credibility, but BELIEVE ME!  :)  Anyway, in the last fading spurt of interest with earthquakes, we had a huge study on the Pickering Fault Urban Myth.  It was my glorious ride into the sunset before they kicked me out.

So I spent a million bucks on studying the Rouge Valley.  Lots of drilling and the rock is as solid as my opinion.  :)  Really, I have since gone into the whole megathrust thing, and the big fault is under Hamilton.  This might not be such a great thing, but it assures that Pickering and Darlington are hit with more normal seismic motions, probably under 20 cm/s.

I'll have to go with Tom Adams there, that they need some more humility.  It's all the little things that will add up, not the big hardware that has been traditionally seismically qualified.  No earthquake in the world can touch that stuff!  But that's irrelevant.  Somewhere in my writing, I have outlined the scenario for the Great Toronto Earthquake, and it's not pleasant.

Now we know the Tremendous Abuse of Geology, from the Niagara Tunnel and the Bruce Thing, but there is no Pickering Fault.

Note added May 25, 2020.  No fault right under Pickering but a huge fault under Hamilton.  Something like 1 in 10,000 per year to blow an M7.  For Pickering, that's just next door, and there are some horrible consequences that I have written about over the years.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is just so much bullshit from a non-geologist.

The geological faults are there and have had seismic events on them. Government maps show them. One event (M=3.8) in 1998 caused OPG to spend $2.5 billion in remediation of Pickering A (only units 1 and 4) They didn't fix units 2 and 3 which is why only 2 units are now on strength.

Asmis should be brought up on charges of unprofessional activities with the Association of Professional Geoscientists for misleading the public and also with the Professional Engineers Ontario for offering opinions to the public that are outside of and beyond his engineering capabilities.

Harold Asmis said...

OMG! You're back! Can you go after the nuclear boys now, so we can shake some scientific money out of them?

I got money because of you guys for the Pickering wild goose chase, but it was fun. Anyway the non-existent Pickering fault doesn't really matter because of the much bigger one under Hamilton. The PGV's remain the same.

This is wonderful, feels like the old days! :)