Federal experts believe that a major earthquake could trigger fires at Los Alamos National Laboratory, releasing radioactive materials and endangering lives. The rupture of a seismic fault that runs underneath the lab would shake the ground more than scientists previously thought, according to a new report (PDF). A natural disaster here would be bad news, since the lab, just west of Santa Fe, is the main plutonium factory in the United States, believed to hold thousands of pounds of plutonium for use in nuclear weapons (the actual amount is classified).
Researchers study plutonium inside glove boxes—a Hollywood movie staple, consisting of a sealed enclosure with gloves so that someone outside the box can work on dangerous materials inside. A major earthquake would shake the ground enough to topple the glove boxes, says the new study. Some glove boxes are enormous and even contain furnaces to cast and mold plutonium. If one of these were to crash, the resulting fire would be uncontrollable and would create a vaporized plutonium cloud that could drift outside of the lab, says the safety report. In a worst-case scenario, a fire could release so much airborne plutonium that a person on the boundary of the lab would get a dose of radiation—potentially many thousands of times greater than a chest X-ray—that could be fatal in weeks, according to individuals knowledgeable about the study [Los Angeles Times].
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Here’s a timely piece of research that may inspire some trepidation, as it comes hard on the heels of Tuesday’s tsunami-triggering earthquake in the South Pacific and today’s destructive earthquake in Indonesia. Researchers have found evidence that major quakes can weaken faults on the other side of the world, increasing the chance of further tremors.
The researchers analyzed 20 years of data at Parkfield, which sits on the mighty San Andreas Fault halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. It’s the most studied earthquake zone in the world, rigged with sensitive instruments to detect minute changes in the Earth’s crust [AP]. In 2004, the seismic records showed a change beginning shortly after the 9.3 magnitude earthquake in Sumatra that caused a deadly tsunami.
There was an increase in the number of small “repeating earthquakes” that regularly shudder through the ground around the San Andreas fault. Study coauthor Taka’aki Taira says that “after Sumatra, the frequency changed – it increased – but the magnitude decreased. That is a signal of the fault weakening; you only have to push a little bit and the fault fails” [BBC News].
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The tsunami that struck the South Pacific islands of Somoa, American Somoa, and Tongo yesterday has resulted in at least 108 deaths, according to early reports.
Experts monitoring the underwater earthquake that triggered the tsunami have issued various reports of its magnitude, ranging from 7.8 to 8.3. The powerful quake struck early on Tuesday morning, local time, as island residents were getting ready for work and school. About ten minutes after the shock, ten-foot-high waves hit American Somoa’s shore. “American Samoa is a small island, and most of the residents are around the coastline,” [said Filipo Ilaoa, deputy director of the American Samoan office in Honolulu]. “There was no warning or anything at all. By the time the alert was out of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, it had already hit” [The New York Times].
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A 8.3 magnitude earthquake in the South Pacific triggered a tsunami early Tuesday morning local time (5:48 pm Greenwich Mean Time), sending residents of the Samoan Islands running to the hills. At this time there are unconfirmed reports of scattered deaths in American Samoa. The powerful waves reportedly swept into Pago Pago, American Samoa’s capital city.
To the west, in the independent state of Samoa, at least one coastal village was leveled, according to eyewitness Graeme Ansell of New Zealand. “It was very quick. The whole village has been wiped out,” Ansell told National Radio from a hill near Samoa’s capital, Apia. “There’s not a building standing. We’ve all clambered up hills, and one of our party has a broken leg. There will be people in a great lot of need ’round here” [AP].
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Image: flickr / epugachev
Geothermal energy, a promising but increasing controversial type of alternative energy, is on the hot seat again, this time in a German town that experienced an earthquake that some are blaming on the local geothermal power plant. A government panel is investigating claims that the plant triggered a magnitude-2.7 earthquake on 15 August in the town of Landau…. If the panel finds against the company that built the plant, Geox of Landau, it could be shut down [New Scientist].
Geox hasn’t been very vocal about the cause of the quake, but company officials initially denied any responsibility for the temblor and continue to dispute the government’s data linking the project to the quake. The panel will, among other things, have to sort through the conflicting data presented by the company and government scientists [The New York Times].
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In a central California area with a history of dramatic earthquakes, researchers have detected a worrisome amount of seismic activity deep underground. The researchers looked at data from 76 monitoring stations along the central California stretch of the San Andreas fault, and found that almost 2,200 “deep earth tremors” had shaken the earth since 2001, a span of time that included two earthquakes. Tremors increased around the time of those two quakes in 2003 and 2004, and rates have remained high since then. “What’s surprising is that the activity has not gone down to its old level” [Reuters], says study coauthor Robert Nadeau. It’s possible that the continuing tremors could presage another quake, researchers say.
Tremors vibrate quietly and can continue for days. Tremors also tend to happen in a deeper, softer part of the Earth’s crust, rather than in the upper part typically thought to generate earthquakes [Los Angeles Times]. Researchers don’t yet know whether tremors are accurate predictors of the larger earthquakes that can convulse the earth’s surface, but Nadeau says they may be a symptom of stress building up on a fault. “We’ve shown that earthquakes can stimulate tremors next to a locked (fault) zone, but we don’t yet have evidence that this tells us anything about future quakes,” Nadeau said…. “But if earthquakes trigger tremors, the pressure that stimulates tremors may also stimulate earthquakes” [San Francisco Chronicle].
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Earth scientists say that from all appearances, Taiwan should be rocked periodically by devastating earthquakes. The island sits on the boundary between the Philippine Sea tectonic plate and the Eurasian plate, and geologists describe the area as one of the most seismically active in the world. Here, the colliding plates move so rapidly that they build mountains at a rate of almost 4mm per year. [Researcher Alan] Linde said that in geological terms that is almost like “growing mushrooms”. “It’s surprising that this area of the globe has had no great earthquakes and relatively few large earthquakes” [BBC News], says Linde.
Now, Linde and his colleagues think they have an explanation for Taiwan’s seismic silence in the region’s typhoons–the tropical cyclones that originate in the northwest Pacific Ocean. Their new study suggests that the typhoons passing over the island have been triggering quakes that harmlessly release fault strain over hours and days rather than destructively over seconds or minutes. And these slow earthquakes, they speculate, may be staving off a big one [ScienceNOW Daily News].
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The earthquake that hit central Italy in the middle of last night, reducing some towns to rubble and killing at least 90 people, was foretold by an Italian seismologist–but his warnings were ignored, according to news reports. However, many researchers say that the seismologist’s predictions were based on inadequate evidence, and say the Italian government was right not to publicize his predictions, as they would only have spread panic.
The region felt its first tremors in mid-January. Scientists say that tremors do not necessarily indicate that a larger quake is on the way, but seismologist Giampaolo Giuliani grew increasingly concerned. He published his warnings, which received some attention; according to Italian newspapers, vans with loudspeakers drove around the town of L’Aquila one month ago telling locals to evacuate their houses. Then Giuliani, who based his forecast on concentrations of radon gas around seismically active areas, was reported to police for “spreading alarm” and was forced to remove his findings from the Internet. “Now there are people who have to apologize to me and who will have what has happened on their conscience” [Reuters], he told an Italian newspaper.
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The devastating earthquake that killed 80,000 people in China’s Sichuan Province last May may have been triggered by a recently built hydropower dam that lies only three miles from the quake’s epicenter, some researchers are arguing. The several hundred million tons of water piled behind the Zipingpu Dam put just the wrong stresses on the adjacent Beichuan fault, [says] geophysical hazards researcher Christian Klose [Science, subscription required].
The 7.9 magnitude earthquake left more than five million people homeless. It remains a raw and emotional topic for most Chinese, and the government has been quick to quash any suggestion that Zipingpu may have been responsible for the catastrophe. Researchers have been denied access to seismological and geological data to examine the earthquake further [Telegraph]. The few researchers who have investigated the subject are now urging restraint in government plans to build more dams, but they say their advice is unlikely to be heeded.
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Natural disasters took a deadly toll in 2008, killing more than 220,000 people and causing a total of $200 billion in damages–a 50 percent increase in costs over 2007. A new report sums up the damages wrought this year by weather and geology; the deadliest disaster was the cyclone that battered Myanmar in May, killing an estimated 130,000 people and causing losses of $4 billion, and the costliest was the earthquake that struck China’s Sichuan province, killing an estimated 70,000 and causing losses of $85 billion.
The new figures come from an annual assessment of global damages by the reinsurance giant Munich Re, which offers backup policies to companies writing primary insurance policies. Reinsurance helps spread risk so that the system can handle large losses from natural disasters [AP]. Munich Re has a financial interest in understanding global weather patterns, and board member Torsten Jeworrek says the uptick in losses from natural disasters is another indication that global warming is already having widespread effects. “Climate change has already started and is very probably contributing to increasingly frequent weather extremes and ensuing natural catastrophes,” he said [BBC News].
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While Indonesia is still rebuilding following the devastating 2004 earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 130,000 people on the island of Sumatra alone, scientists are warning that several other major earthquakes are likely to occur in the region over the next decades. A new study examined the growth records of coral reefs off the coast of Sumatra, and say they show evidence of repeated bursts of earthquakes that relieve pressure on the Sunda fault. A shock in 2007 may be the beginning of a new cycle, researchers say.
Says study coauthor Kerry Sieh: “If previous cycles are a reliable guide we can expect one or more very large west Sumatran earthquakes … within the next two decades” [Reuters]. As if to illustrate the point that the Indian Ocean is seismically active, reports are coming in that a 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck last night off the coast of Sumatra; happily, there have been no reports of casualties or damages, and authorities say there is no risk of a tsunami.
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Two groups of geologists have found evidence that the Indian Ocean tsunami that devastated coastal towns in Southeast Asia in 2004 wasn’t the first massive wave to pummel those shores, but the last tsunami of equivalent size occurred about 600 to 700 years ago. That long gap might explain how enough geological stress built up to power the huge undersea earthquake that launched the killer waves four years ago, researchers said [AP].
One group of researchers took sediment samples on a barrier island off the west coast of Thailand, while the other group dug into the soil in a northern region of Sumatra. The surge of a tsunami brings with it a great deal of sediment that rushes inland; the bigger the tsunami, the deeper and further inland the layer of sediment it leaves behind. In locations where those deposits aren’t disturbed by wind or running water, they can be used as a historical record of tsunami after more layers are added later [BBC News].
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The May earthquake in China’s Sichuan province that killed 70,000 people may lead to further destruction. According to a new seismic study, the magnitude 7.9 earthquake in May increased the stress on nearby faults, and therefore heightened the risk of further quakes. Stress on the nearby Kunlun, Xianshuihe and Min Jiang faults has increased, they say, doubling the risk that one of them will unleash a magnitude 6.0 or 7.0 tremor in the next decade [Discovery News].
Those three nearby faults are now under more stress because of a domino-like effect where the movement of one piece of Earth’s crust forces another piece to move up, down and away, geophysicists reported. “One great earthquake seems to make the next one more likely, not less,” said [study coauthor] Ross Stein of the U.S. Geological Survey. “We tend to think of earthquakes as relieving stress on a fault. That may be true for the one that ruptured, but not for the adjacent faults” [Reuters].
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Researchers working at California’s San Andreas Fault say they detected subtle geological shifts that occurred hours before two small earthquakes, raising the possibility that scientists could eventually develop an early warning system to get people out of harms way well before the earth started to tremble.
“If you had 10 hours’ warning, from a practical point of view, you could evacuate populations, you could certainly get people out of buildings, you could get the fire department ready,” said co-author Paul Silver of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington. “Hurricane [warnings] give you an idea of what could be done” [BBC News].
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Aftershocks sent ripples of fear through China yesterday and today, as engineers and army officials struggled to drain the “quake lake” formed by the massive May earthquake, when rubble from a landslide dammed the Tongkou River in southwest China.
The lake’s water level has been rising steadily, and officials worry that another quake could burst the dam, threatening more than 1 million people downstream. The government has already evacuated 250,000 people.
As the lake is in a remote mountainous region accessible only by foot and by helicopter, the army has airlifted in construction equipment, explosives, and personnel. The teams have already dug out a spillway to safely drain the water and reduce pressure on the dam, but observers say it’s not working well enough.
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