Skip to main content

The Next Big One

By

japan_earthquake Want to predict the next big earthquake – here or anywhere else?

NEARY: Yeah, now, a lot of people feel that in order to be ready for an earthquake, you need to know when it's going to happen. But you've written a lot about the fact that it's very hard to predict exactly when an earthquake might occur.

Ms. HOUGH: Well, we can't predict right now, within a short term, within a short window, when the next big one is going to hit. And we really can't make strong statements about earthquake likelihood within even 10 years.

And so that scientific problem has received a lot of attention. It just hasn't made any traction in a useful way. So what we focus on instead is what we call forecasting, which is looking at the expected average rates of earthquakes, and so, you know, what are we up against on average in the next 30 years? And that's the basis for our preparedness.

Back in the late 60s, a conclave of psychics predicted that a large chunk of California was going to drop into the sea via an earthquake at a precise time.

NEARY: Why is it so hard to predict, first of all? Why is it so hard?

Ms. HOUGH: If you were going to predict an earthquake, you would have to basically see something from the Earth, some sort of signal that's heads-up, a big earthquake is coming.

And a lot of signals have been looked at, investigated, proposed, and none of them have held up to closer scrutiny. So people might think they see radon fluctuations before an earthquake. An earthquake happens, and there was a radon blip.

Well, you need to test that hypothesis and look at radon systematically and look at earthquakes. They're difficult studies to do because we can't run the experiment. We just have to wait for the earthquakes to happen.

But when we do run the careful experiments, the precursors that we think we see just don't hold up. So what that basically means is that we can't - we haven't seen anything that tells us that an earthquake is on the way.

So for now at least, you’ll know very precisely where and when an earthquake hits if you happen to be where and when an earthquake hits.

Good conversation on NPR about risk assessment (which you can do for earthquakes) between Lynn Neary and Susan Hough, a seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey.

Remnants of the Japan earthquake

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fluor Invests in NuScale

By
You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap...
1 comment
Read more

Wednesday Update

By
From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Nuclear Utility Moves Up in Credit Ratings, Bank is "Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy"

By
Some positive signs that nuclear utilities can continue to receive positive ratings even while they finance new nuclear plants for the first time in decades: Wells Fargo upgrades SCANA to Outperform from Market Perform Wells analyst says, "YTD, SCG shares have underperformed the Regulated Electrics (total return +2% vs. +9%). Shares trade at 11.3X our 10E EPS, a modest discount to the peer group median of 11.8X. We view the valuation as attractive given a comparatively constructive regulatory environment and potential for above-average long-term EPS growth prospects ... Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy. SCG plans to participate in the development of two regulated nuclear units at a cost of $6.3B, raising legitimate concerns regarding financing and construction. We have carefully considered the risks and are comfortable with SCG’s strategy based on a highly constructive political & regulatory environment, manageable financing needs stretched out over 10 years, strong partners...
Post a Comment
Read more