In the last 30 days there have been 6 earthquakes magnitude 2.5+ in the New Madrid Fault Zone.
In the last YEAR there have only been approximately 19 such quakes.
Roughly put, the last 30 days by themselves have seen half as many earthquakes as the entire year before.
None of these quakes have set off our early warning earthquake sensor (see video below) which can give up to two minutes warning for the massive M8-9 earthquake risk Missouri (and the entire east coast) faces.
These devices work by detecting the faster traveling "P" waves that immediately precede the damaging earthquake "S" waves. The warning time works out to around 1-3 seconds for every 5 miles distance between you and the epicenter of the earthquake. For the Magnitude 8 earthquake risk we face here in Saint Louis, Missouri, that works out to 37 to 111 seconds of warning time. We'll have a follow up video to go into more details.
Below are Amazon links to the detector we use and other similar devices.
There was a magnitude 3.9 this morning in Arkansas just west of Memphis and North of Forrest city.
Earthquakes in this region are interesting because even small ones can be felt over long distances and large ones can shake the entire eastern seaboard.
In fact, from Dec 1811 to Feb 1812 THREE magnitude 8 earthquakes hit back to back to back, each about 1 month apart. These quakes rang church bells in Boston and made the Mississippi river flow backwards for 3 days as it filled the newly created Real Foot Lake in Tennessee.
So when a 3.9 hits we pay attention, and apparently so does the government. Back in 2008 a magnitude 5.1 quake hit Evansville Indiana, we felt is and its aftershock over 200 miles away here in Saint Louis. Fast forward to Januarary 2011 and FEMA was putting out RFI's for just tons of temporary shelters, , blankets body bags, and 140 million of MRE's. The purpose of those RFI's seemed to be to identify potential suppliers should a quake hit the New Madrid fault zone.
The MRE RFI even resulted in this headline
Did FEMA Expect Midwest MegaQuake by 2014? in Science magazine, but for some reason they did not report the other associated RFI's for shelters, blankets and body bags.
God watches out for fools and drunks, or so we have heard. But, who watches out for those who aren't prepared for a Magnitude 8.2 aftershock / earthquake off the coast of Cape Inubosaki, Japan? Maybe thats what Uncle Sam was doing when they ordered 1,050,000 Doses of iOSAT thyroid blocker for the US Military in Japan.
In our previous blog post we detailed that a magnitude 8.0+ aftershock is still due as a result of the great "Fukushima" Tohoku 9.0+ earthquake. Looking at the available data at a 50,000 foot level, from a shear flow perspective, our Scientific Wild Assed Guess [SWAG] is that the largest Tohoku aftershock will occur off of the coast of Cape Inubosaki, Japan @ 35.8 , 141.1 .
More info will follow in a video detailing the information.
An M8 aftershock, based on historical major Japanese quake data, has an 80% weight of occurring today with that weighting reaching 100% by September 2016.
Based on ANSS data:
An M6 aftershock is expected to occur around Jan 2013 +/- a few months.
An M7 aftershock is overdue based on Japanese aftershock data
An M7 aftershock is not due until July 2015 based on USA earthquake data
(the M7 discrepancy centers around whether or not the 3/14/12 M7 quake was an aftershock)
We plan a video discussing the math in detail.
In the mean time, below are the charts supporting the above information. Those who remember our June 2011 video successfully predicting a series of M6 quakes will already will recognize that charts below as updated versions. The last chart indicates that recently there has been an excess release of quake energy. If that excess energy release was not uniformly distributed, it may indicate that a stronger quake is near.
Overheated spent nuclear fuel rod storage at Earthquake damaged North Anna nuclear plant, and Dominion's resultant request for a Federal Exemption seem like a very bad idea to the Potrblog team.
On the other hand, for Dominion and the NRC, an exemption could save a world of money and a massive industry wide nightmare if the dry casket storage is shown to have not measured up.
Hat tip to "Radiation News" for making us aware of the Taos reading. The preliminary information was sourced from the "radiation network"
The report is short on exact details, however the available information indicates that the approximately 3x background reading was taken in calm, windless air, with no rain or snow present. The event lasted approximately 20 minutes before taking a step-function like drop. The report WRONGLY indicates that Jet Stream "flow too far north to be a factor". A quick look at the Jet-Stream map shown below indicates the Jet Stream was likely a primary factor in the reading. The area of detection is circled in red, the time stamp on the map corresponds approximately 48 minutes before the reading was taken.
The key feature of note is that radiation was detected in the termination edge of the jet-stream; in short, the detection was in a location where the Jet-Stream wind was coming to a stop and thusly radioactive contaminants were able to fall out of the stream. Following the Jet-Stream map backwards in time, it appears the fallout would correlate well with radioactive releases from Japan roughly around 1/13/12. see those maps here.The 1/13/12 time frame correlates strongly with a series of earthquake near Fukushima see M5.8 quake hits 60 km from Fukushima plant — Followed by multiple M4s
The POTRBLOG team has completed an analysis of the information presented at the September 8th Dominion North Anna / Nuclear Regulatory commission meeting; we present our findings here for your review and input. In this analysis we will present several key conclusions from our analysis; these are issues which the NRC team seemingly missed during the meeting. Moreover, we will also point out several significant issues of public concern which the media should have reported.
Overall, the lower level NRC staff engineers & scientists did a good job questioning the significant weaknesses in Dominion’s thrust to underperform in restarting the North Anna Nuclear Power Plant. However, the issues listed below remain. Hopefully the NRC will discover and address these issues in their upcoming North Anna meeting on October 3rd, and we look forward to being proved wrong on these points of significant concern.
First, issues either undiscovered or unmentioned by the NRC concerning North Anna.
North Anna Unit 2 underwent significantly more ground motion than Unit 1; as evidenced by failure of all three of Unit 2’s generator step up transformers and half of Unit 2’s back up generators, versus the failure of one Unit 1 generator step up transformer and zero of Unit 1’s back up generators. [Unit 1 has limited seismic recording, Unit 2 has no seismic recording]
North Anna Unit 2 had its cool down stopped and was left in hot standby because Dominion was concerned about their capability to further cool down the reactor –“Defense in depth”. Indicators are that the lake levels were significantly dropped by the cool down of Unit 1
Had North Anna’s seismic alarms functioned properly both reactors Units 1 and 2 would have been required to go into cold shutdown, which lake levels and cooling capacity may have not supported.
The failure of North Anna to react properly as a result of the failure of seismic indicators to alert the operators of earthquake design exceedance combined with an approaching hurricane and limited reactor cooling capability placed the public at risk.
Second, issues mentioned by the NRC but not covered by the media.
The NRC does not consider radioactive leakage from the plant to be a hindrance to restarting North Anna unless it is “REALLY LEAKING” to the point of affecting functionality of the restart.
North Anna’s limited dimensional seismic recording capability UNDERREPORTED the strength of the quake.
The seismic recordings which were available were missing several frequency bands.
Dominion’s inspection theory has been based on “if it looks good, it must be good”
North Anna should have been able to interpret seismic results on site.
Finally, there is at least one person at North Anna who deserves a pay raise. But, that raise is deserved based on his ability to skillfully “handle” regulatory engineers and scientists.
The existence of high pressure injection wells pushing Boron into the ground water around Fukushima would be signs of one of a few last ditch efforts to prevent a massive China Syndrome steam explosion. For that reason, it is an approach that would likely be held close to the vest.
A full blown China Syndrome would result from a ball of hot fissioning 'corium' burning through to cool ground water, resulting in a massive radioactive steam explosion. However, for the most part, it appears that the Boron laden cooling water being pumped into the reactors has kept corium temperatures low enough that the suspected August 11th limited melt through was not immediately exothermically violent to an extent that it was immediately publicly obvious. The video below details the case supporting that limited melt through. In that scenario, criticallity was reached when portions of the corium transitioned from Boron laden cooling water (which absorbs neutrons) to ground water.
Unfortunately, the limited 8/11/11 melt through would have opened up a Nuclear PLINKO type path to the ground water, just waiting for the next upset to send a ball of corium into the Grand Prize winning China Syndrome slot. It is no wonder that the Japanese Military is practicing evacuation drills for just that eventuality.
--------
On August 20th, the POTRBLOG team reported that the 178X background radioactive rain fall "may be indicative of a RECENT SIGNIFICANT radiological event in Fukushima." That assessment now appears to be now born out by a Japanese report of large Iodine-131 detections in radioactive sewage collected in Oshu City 180+ KM north of Fukushima on August 25th. The collection date of the sewage sample correlates to several earthquakes during the period and reports of radioactive steam rising up from cracks in the ground at the Fukushima nuclear site. It also correlates strongly with large increases in radioactive detection along the jetstream in North America.
Update: The DATA LEAK that sparked tomorrow's unscheduled NORTH ANNA Nuclear plant NRC meeting- THE QUAKE EXCEEDED THE DESIGN BY 2X
Anyone down wind, down stream, or living any where near the North Anna Nuclear Plant should do their utmost to physically attend TOMMORROW's (Sept 8th) PUBLIC MEETING that the Nuclear Regulator Commission will hold with Dominion North Anna management.
The extremely short meeting notice and the 2 1/2 hour drive required for North Anna residents to attend the meeting will make it difficult for local North Anna residents to attend and ask difficult questions (which likely won't be allowed anyways).IT IS VITALLY IMPORTANT THAT NORTH ANNA RESIDENTS ATTEND; a lack of in-person public attendance equates to a lack of public accountability.
The meeting will be held 1 – 5 p.m "Thursday, Sept. 8, in the Commissioners’ Conference Room on the first floor of the NRC’s One White Flint North building, at 11555 Rockville Pike in Rockville, Md".
The short of the meeting will be that North Anna plant is currently safe and that the plant will not be restarted until safety is assured.
What will NOT be discussed is:
The detail criteria which would cause the NRC to decommission the North Anna Plant.
The detail definition of "Normal Radioactive Releases".
The detail definition of abnormal radioactive releases.
The current effective earthquake design limit of the Nuclear Plant at this instant in time.
The current effective earthquake design limit of the entire site as a composite, Nuclear Plant and Lake Anna Dam (+ dikes) at this instant in time.
How much lower Lake Anna levels could have dropped before impacting the safety of the plant.
A detail definition (with criteria) of what "safety assured" means.
Any explanation of how and why the public's safety was put at risk by withholding information from the public until AFTER THE HURRICANE HAD PASSED that the plant's earthquake design limits where exceeded.
Update: 9/18/11 The issue appears to be resolved. The short of the issue is that there was IP based routing to certain servers that had out of date information. It is very disconcerting that a Safety Based organization had these sorts of issues for an extended time period on one of its primary external communication routes.
Update 9/8/11: I am now Locked Out of directly viewing the NRC “Current Event Notification Reports”; and only have limited success using anonymous proxies to gain access to the reports.
Surely this can't be a case of dirty tricks, but I decided to document it to see if anyone has a resolution. From the looks of it my IP address is not allowed to resolve any new NRC Nuclear Event Alert webpages. My only current access is using Google's cache via search for a current event number, or using an anonymous proxy to access the NRC webpage. It's an issue I've never run into before, any suggestions or insights would be appreciated.
As of 3:15pm Eastern time on 9/1/11 the NRC has not updated its Nuclear Events Reports webpage? That surely must be a sign that nothing important is going on! Lets see if they can stretch it out past Labor day.
The following is a direct link to the relevant portion of the previous blog post's video which correlates recent massive short-half-life radiation spikes in North America with recent Fukushima reports as being indicative of "Corium" interacting with ground water in a China Syndrome event.
I have been able to analyze the half life data from the high radioactivity 8/20/11 Saint Louis rain fall. The video goes into detail on the detection; how the source relates to recent events in Fukushima; and how this detection was different from previous radioactive rainfalls which had longer half lives.
Update 9/7/11: Fukushima August Re-Criticality: Groundwater, Iodine 131, & Radon 222 = China Syndrome
On August 20th, the POTRBLOG team reported that the 178X background radioactive rain fall "may be indicative of a RECENT SIGNIFICANT radiological event in Fukushima." That assessment now appears to be now born out by a Japanese report of large Iodine-131 detections in radioactive sewage collected in Oshu City 180+ KM north of Fukushima on August 25th. The collection date of the sewage sample correlates to several earthquakes during the period and reports of radioactive steam rising up from cracks in the ground at the Fukushima nuclear site. It also correlates strongly with large increases in radioactive detection along the jetstream in North America.
Taken together, the data is indicative of Coruim entering the ground water, becoming re-critical, and inducing the release/production of large amounts of Radon 222. The associated detections of extremely large quantities of Radon Daughters in the radioactive fallout raining down on North America are likely indicators of harder to detect longer half life fallout in the same rainfall.
Update 8/31/11:
I had planned to post the "crib notes" version of the video. But I found a commentary on LiveLeak which gives a good 3rd person insight into SOME aspects of the video. Here is a "fair use" snippet of that commentary:
Okay. In the really bland jargon I associate with the nuclear engineers and consultants I know who work in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, this guy is laying out why he believes Fukushima may very well become a sustained global disaster.
He is not able to directly identify the radioactive elements causing increases of radiation in the rainfall in Saint Louis. However, the decrease in radiation in a given sample over time gives him enough data to identify the predominant radioactive isotopes that are present in the rainwater.
The occasional spikes in Radon tells him that something, somewhere, is generating large emissions of radioactive material in the atmosphere at irregular intervals. Kind of like a sick kid having intermittent vomiting episodes.
These occasional large emissions are consistent with various theories floated over the years of how a nuclear meltdown event would play out in the soil, bedrock, and water-table beneath a nuclear power plant.
In short, he says we may be experiencing the opening stages of the nightmare scenario from the old movie "China Syndrome".
IF I LIVED ON NORTH ANNA LAKE (or directly down wind) I WOULD LEAVE THE AREA.
Only"reasonable assurance that the Safety Related systems are fully functional."
the nuclear power plant is "in an unanalyzed condition that significantly degrades plant safety. "
NRC Event reports indicate that the earthquake exceeded North Anna Nuclear Plant's Design earthquake limits by over at least FIVE cycles per second. It is interesting to note that immediate aftermath of the earthquake North Anna Nuclear plant's televised spokespeople where quick to assure the local residents that design limits where not exceeded; they apparently have not be so forth coming in admitting that the initial information was incorrect.
Information drawn from NRC event reports 47201 and 47181
