DC earthquake devastation!

 

Not much damage at my place in Powhatan, but my friend who lives on the North side of Lake Anna, postal address Mineral, Va. had his house move 1/2" off the foundation. His neighbor, who has a modular home, had the foundation buckle in and the house actually split down the middle. Apparently there is a 1-2" gap you can feel under the carpet as you walk down the hall.
Considering both buddies have modular homes, it might not be that big a deal to put them back on the foundations. Don't know yet.

Chris

 

Glad everyone is ok. The shock wave(if you call it that) made it all the way to St. Louis missouri. My office is on the top floor and everything just started swaying for about 30 secs. Hoping the one in colorado and the one on the east didn't get the new madrid upset. it could be a bumpy ride if it does.

 

... caused by our founding Forefathers turning in their graves.

 

Look where Mineral is on the map. I think it is just north west of Richmond.
I think there is a nuclear station there too if I remember right.

 

North Anna 1 and 2.
From what I've heard in the news today, they were designed to survive a 6.0 quake..... kinda cuttin' it close.

 

I read 2 reactors went off line and it was north west of Richmond.

Nothing shaking here today, but I heard California got a shake

 

Larry You got some splaning to do, have you been trying out them double 00 secret loads that you been working up. Again!!!!!!!

 

I thought it was you stamping your feet in a temper tantrum

 

That would be the two mentioned above, our sister station North Anna (I'm at Surry). Both of them went off line just as designed and as previously stated, all four diesels fired up also as designed when they lost off-site power. One is going into a normal refueling outage four weeks early and the other is being inspected and evaluated for return to service.

 

Dominion lifts alert at North Anna nuclear plant. On Wednesday, one day after a 5.8 magnitude earthquake shook much of the eastern seaboard, Dominion lifted an alert following an inspection of its North Anna Power Station. The Washington Post/AP (8/25) reports, “Dominion Virginia Power completed an inspection Wednesday at its twin-reactor North Anna Power Station, which was rocked but not threatened by a powerful earthquake centered less than 20 miles away from the nuclear power plant, the utility and federal regulators said.” Dominion’s Daniel G. Stoddard said, “Obviously the plant is safe and there was no release of radioactivity due to the event.” He added that “the inspection, which includes on-site resident inspectors from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has found only minor evidence of damage from the quake, such as insulation knocked from pipes or a broken bolt.”

A separate article by the Washington Post/AP (8/25) notes that the NRC “says no major damage has been found at the 12 nuclear power plant sites that got inspections but were not shut down following an earthquake that rattled the East Coast.”

The Washington Post (8/25, Mufson) reports Dominion Resources said that the company’s “safety procedures worked. When three shaken transformers tripped like circuit breakers, four locomotive-size diesel generators kicked in.” However, “some nuclear power experts said that the size of the earthquake — big for a relatively tame seismic zone — combined with the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, showed that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should raise the bar for earthquake protection.” The Charlottesville Daily Progress (8/25, Bacque) reports, “No release of radioactive material occurred beyond the minor releases associated with normal station operations, the company said.” Dominion’s Stoddard said, “The response was essentially the same as what you would have seen in a drill. … It was just like we practiced it.” In a report by CNN on The Situation Room (8/24, 6:50 pm EDT) Stoddard demonstrated how operators responded to the earthquake.

Dominion CEO Thomas Farrell spoke to CNBC Squawk Box (8/24, 7:00 a.m. EDT), saying “The plant itself, the nuclear plant, the generating facilities themselves suffered no damage.” Farrell adds, “There was some damage in the substation to the transformers, but nothing to do with the nuclear reactor.” In an interview on Fox News Channel’s Your World with Neil Cavuto (8/24, 4:15 pm EDT), Dominion Virginia Power’s David Christian said, “There is nothing for any member of the public to fear in this situation.”

The Richmond Times-Dispatch (8/24) reports, “Dominion ended the alert condition at North Anna at 11:16 a.m. after starting a reactor cooling pump for each of the two reactor units. The reactors were cooled by natural circulation and emergency pumps while the reactor coolant pumps were not operating.” North Anna “remains in a ‘notification of unusual event’ condition, the least serious of four U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission emergency classifications, while the reactor cool-down and inspections of plant equipment and systems continues.” A separate article by the Richmond Times-Dispatch (8/25, Williams) reports, “Tuesday’s earthquake would have had to unleash at least four times more energy than it did to equal the theoretical earthquake the North Anna station was designed to withstand.” The Times-Dispatch notes, “Though a magnitude-5.8 quake would appear to be approaching the magnitude-6.2 quake that was the basis for the plant’s design, the earthquake magnitude scale is logarithmic.”

The Washington Times (8/25, Sherfinski) reports Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor yesterday “toured the North Anna, Va., power station, whose two nuclear reactors a few miles from the epicenter of the quake shut down automatically on Tuesday.” McDonnell said, “Everything worked exactly as it was supposed to — the automatic shutdown occurring, all of the procedures … all the reports to the [Nuclear Regulatory Commission]. … All those things have gone well.” Cantor told the Culpeper Star-Exponent (8/25, Champion), “The most rewarding thing to see at the power station was that everything did what it was supposed to do. Emergency responses were exactly what were anticipated” adding it “speaks volumes for their operations and the future of energy and security in the country.” The “2chambers” blog of the Washington Post (8/24, Sonmez), CBS News (8/25), the Richmond Times-Dispatch (8/24), WRC-TV Washington, DC (8/24, Stone), the Virginia Gazette (8/24), WHSV-TV Harrisonburg (8/24) and WTOP-FM/AP (8/24) noted that the pair had plans to visit the plant.

The WWBT-TV Richmond (8/25) website reported, “The epicenter was less than 20 miles from the power station.” CNN (8/25, Hargreaves) reports, “Two other plants are located within 100 miles of the epicenter -- Calvert Cliffs near Lusby, Md., and Surry near Williamsburg, Va. Those plants did not report any problems.”

Other Virginia-area news outlets publishing articles on the incident at North Anna include: The Washington Post (8/24, Achenbach, Branigin), the Washington Times (8/25, Noble), the Washington Business Journal (8/25, Subscription Publication), the Washington Examiner (8/25, Farmer), the Richmond Times-Dispatch (8/25, Hester), the Virginia Gazette (8/25), the Chatham Star-Tribune (8/25), the Washington Post/Bloomberg (8/25, Jensen, Gaouette), the Roanoke Times/AP (8/25), The Roanoke Times (8/25, Sluss), the Cavalier Daily (8/25, Waldorp), WTVR-TV Richmond (8/25, Sears), WJLA-TV Washington, DC (8/25), WAVY-TV/AP (8/24), WTRK-TV/AP (8/25), WUSA-TV/AP (8/25), WVIR-TV Charlottesville (8/25) and WCAV-TV Charlottesville (8/25).

AOL Energy (8/25, Ryan) reports, “Dominion spokesman Jim Norvelle said there’s no scheduled restart date, and the company is considering whether to keep the units off-line for some routine maintenance before restarting them, especially as the August weather continues to be mild and electricity demand is down.”

The Wall Street Journal (8/25, Smith, Tracy, Subscription Publication) reports that results from an NRC analysis at North Anna could provide insight on the durability of American nuclear power plants in the eastern half of the United States. But the “E2 Wire” blog on The Hill (8/25, Restuccia) website reports that the earthquake “is likely to revive a long-standing debate about the safety of the country’s nuclear power plants” and although “there were no reports of damage at the North Anna reactors and Dominion said the cooling systems were working properly, nuclear opponents quickly pounced on the incident Tuesday.” Nuclear power critics “said it shows that U.S. nuclear reactors are vulnerable to major natural disasters and that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should move quickly to implement a series of sweeping regulatory changes recommended last month by a federal task force.”

CBS News (8/25, Condon) reports, “Democratic Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts is calling for stronger nuclear safety standards in the wake of the 5.8-magnitude earthquake that rocked the East Coast and prompted two nuclear reactors near the Virginia epicenter to automatically switch to emergency power sources.” On Wednesday, Markey “sent a letter today to Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Greg Jaczko, calling for the NRC to create new requirements for the maintenance of emergency diesel and battery generators to prevent a nuclear accident.” The congressman “said the East Coast quake adds emphasis to a lesson the U.S. nuclear industry should have learned from Japan’s nuclear crisis earlier this year.”

 

Ok Dieseldude4x4 help me out here... didn't the power plants act (or react - no pun intended) EXACTLY as they should have???? What lessons were we supposed to derive from the Japan earthquake? I guess we need to build tsunami walls around these things too...

 

Yes they did react exactly as they should have. They both shut down and reacted to the loss of off-site power exactly as they were designed to do. All four diesels fired up (three Fairbanks Morse and one 3612 Cat) and accepted the load to power all of the emergency pumps (residual heat removal) and equpment. There are three 7000 horsepower reactor coolant pumps / motors per unit that each have a six ton fly wheel on them. They are designed to coast down slowly to allow you enough time to get the RHR pumps lined up and going. Even once they do stop, the plant is in a condition at that time, and designed as such again, to allow natural circulation and cool down to take over. Each plant is designed to a certain risk / cost criteria and there is no way in the world to plan for everything. Fukushima was designed to handle a 20 tsunami with no issues and guess what, they got hit with a thirty foot wall of water. So now what do we do, build a 40 foot wall around the plant?

The reaction you read about above comes from a group that I like to say have NFC! (PM me if you need me to explain that one). Next year is my 30'th year at this station in the nuke business. Twenty years ago, I may have agreed with all the NFC'ers. Ten years ago, not so much. Nearly 30 years later, I'll take this type power over the dirt burners any day and yes we have quite a few of those too. There have been literally billions and billions of dollars spent on improving nuclear safety these plants since TMI and Chernobyl. The new generation reactors are designed even safer than these plants are with a lot of passive systems meaning little operator action required for a transient. Chernobyl was a horrible horrible accident but they were operating outside their design basis. TMI was not near as bad and even as bad as it was, everything stayed inside the third barrier.

No one wants nukes because they are dangerous. No one wants coal because it pollutes the air. Now they don't want wind mills becasue they kill the birds. OK, where is this power supposed to come from that we take for granted every day? The sun? Yeah right. What about chemical plants? What about that truck right next to you on the interstate carrying 8000 gallons of who knows what with the sleepy texting driver and the worn out brakes and the may-pop tires?

Sorry, I got off track there. Anyone that doubts the safety of a nuke plant should go to their local plant to the information center and see some of the precautions this industry has taken. If that is not good enough, turn everything off at the house for about a week or so and let me know how you feel then.

 

Well said Dude!

I wish they put that kind of money into Oyster Creek in New Jersey though. 25 years ago they used to be a customer of mine. I sold Power distribution and controlls for Cutler Hammer. I spent most of my time hunting down obsolete parts for the motor controls and contacts for the tired switch gear. That plant is right on the coast and built for a 15 Tsunami. Pretty scarey. But I heard they are moving all the GenSets to higher ground and further back. A lesson learned from Japan. that plan let the NRC give them another 15 year operation permit. Ofcoarse, that was before Gernoble in the USSR.(SP) Another lesson learned. I bet they have upgraded it since. Ore one would hope. . . Ahh it's far enough away that I don't have to evacuate and the wind goes the other way. LOL It's those 40 pound clams. . . .

I'm not familiar with the parts of the plant you are talking about, but fully understand what you talked about. Those flywheels also help keep the pumps spinning while back up power comes up on line. It also reduces surges on the motors and power when the pumps slug. I'd love to be the scrap guy to get that job. LOL

Regarding those tree huggers, they are hipocrits. They sit there making their ignorant claims with their big screen plasma TV's, big computers, cell phones and central air. Not to mention they are sooooo misinformed. And the media blows everything out of proportion. Got me started again.

It's kind of like Hoover Dam. The media makes it look so gigantic, but you can walk across the highest point in less than 2 minutes. I was disappointed.

 

Now see!!! there you go talking with logic again...

You know my stand on energy, I'm standing right on top of a 22,000 foot pipe pulling out of the ground.