Nuke plant increases NYC earthquake risk

Published: Aug. 23, 2008 at 12:12

NEW YORK, Aug. 23 (UPI) — Seismologists said nuclear power plants located 24 miles north of New York increase the risk of serious damage from earthquakes.Columbia University researchers said the Indian Point nuclear power plants sit astride the previously unidentified intersection of two active seismic zones, making the risk of earthquake substantially greater than formerly believed.

The findings, published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, are based on “sophisticated analysis of past quakes, plus 34 years of new data on tremors, most of them perceptible only by modern seismic instruments,” the university said Thursday in a release. Seismometers at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory monitor most of the northeastern United States.

The authors looked at 383 known earthquakes from 1677 to 2007 in a 15,000-square-mile area. Magnitude 5 quakes occurred in 1737, 1783 and 1884.

Researchers said such quakes should be routinely expected, on average, about every 100 years.

“Today, with so many more buildings and people, a magnitude 5 centered below the city would be extremely attention-getting,” co-author John Armbruster said. “We’d see billions (of dollars) in damage, with some brick buildings falling. People would probably be killed.”