Gwen L. DuBois, Baltimore Sun - Nearly half of the 104 reactors in the U.S. are near major fault lines. In August, a 5.8 earthquake 11 miles from Virginia's North Anna nuclear power plant, which is 70 miles from Washington D.C., rattled nerves in Baltimore and far beyond. The quake caused twice the amount of ground movement for which North Anna was designed. One backup generator failed. The presence of a geological fault below the reactors was known and covered up by the owners and regulators at the time of construction. Twenty-seven reactors have not made adequate provisions for earthquake protection, including Indian Point, the nuclear reactor within 25 miles of New York City. Forty-seven reactors do not meet Nuclear Regulatory Commission requirements for fire prevention. Fort Calhoun in Nebraska has remained off-line since a major flood in June. A recent report by the NRC on nuclear power safety in the U.S. supposedly redacted a section that dealt with the precarious state of dams in this country.Any of these events could cause a loss of power, overheating of nuclear fuel, and a partial or full meltdown. Just as in Japan, an event in the spent fuel pool would be far worse than one in a reactor. Unlike the reactor core, which sits in a steel vessel surrounded by a primary steel and concrete container, the spent fuel pool is surrounded only by the easily breached secondary structure, which nuclear expert Robert Alvarez describes as a building "no more secure than a car dealership."
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