More Than 600 Aftershocks Have Hit Since August Quake

November 6, 2011 at 12:52 am (Food and drink, Global Events, Health and wellness, News and politics)
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USGS: More than 600 aftershocks have hit since August quake

Video Photos
By: Kari Pugh
Published: November 03, 2011
Updated: November 03, 2011 – 8:07 AM

There have been more than 600 aftershocks in Virginia since the rare East Coast earthquake that struck on Aug. 23, according to U.S. Geological Survey researchers.

“What we might be looking at is either a new fault or a previously undiscovered one deep within the geologic formations here,” wrote research geologist Mark Carter in a Wednesday night Twitter lecture titled “Did You Feel It? The Virginia Earthquake of August 23, 2011.”

Click here to read the whole lecture.

Not all of the aftershocks following the 5.8 magnitude quake have been strong enough to be recorded on the USGS “Latest Earthquakes” website. But there have been some 40 or more temblors of magnitude 2.0 or higher.

“This earthquake was felt from Florida to Ontario in Canada, and as far west as the Mississippi River,” wrote Mike Blanpied, associate program coordinator for the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program.

Blanpied said the quake was the strongest in Virginia in 114 years, and left behind more than $100 million in damage, including to the Washington Monument and the National Cathedral in D.C. A school in Mineral, near the epicenter, was seriously damaged and the nearby North Anna Nuclear Power Plant remains offline as workers check for damage.

Blanpied said the Virginia quake is significant due to the East Coast’s lack of preparedness for such events, and because the shaking can be felt – and cause damage — for such long distances.

The survey received 150,000 responses to its online “Did You Feel It” questionnaire, the most it has ever received.

“Earthquakes in the East are different. Underneath us is the middle of a tectonic plate, so it’s been very quiet,” Blanpied wrote. “Our geology is very smooth and unfractured, so there’s nothing to stop an earthquake from spreading.”

Despite the damage, and the unnerving aftershocks, Carter wrote that it could have been much worse.

“I’ll leave you with a reminder that we really did dodge a bullet here. The fact that there were no casualties is amazing.”  (Read Full Article)

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Tons of Earthquake-Tsunami Debris Headed For US Coastline

October 27, 2011 at 6:28 pm (Food and drink, Global Events, Health and wellness, News and politics)
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Examiner.com
Up to 20 million tons of Japan earthquake debris headed towards US coastlineUp to 20 million tons of Japan
Earthquake Debris Headed Towards US Coastline

KITV/ABC
Up to twenty million tons of Japan tsunami debris headed for Hawaii By Erin De Santiago, International Travel Examiner

After the catastrophic March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, millions of tons of debris were washed out to sea. Despite what many people think, not everything will disintegrate and fall to the ocean floor.

On October 24, the UK Daily Mail confirmed what many knew was inevitable – tsunami debris has been spotted and is making its way towards Hawaii.

A Russian training ship headed from Honolulu to Vladivostok spotted the debris last month after passing the Midway Islands. There were televisions, fridges, pieces of furniture, and even a 20-foot fishing boat from Fukushima amongst the items floating in the Pacific.

See photos of Japan earthquake debris making its way towards to the US coastline
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Scientists believe there is 5 – 20 million tons of debris, which could reach the U.S. West Coast within three years. It is moving faster than expected and may hit the Midway Islands by winter and Hawaii in less than two years.

Researchers at the University of Hawaii have been tracking the debris for almost six months and had prepared untested computer models of ocean currents to project the trajectory of the debris. The confirmation of its current location by the Russian training ship gives researchers support that their model works.

While the researchers don’t want to alarm people, they note it’s important to know this is coming as the debris can affect small ships and threaten coastlines.

Japan’s massive 9.0 earthquake and tsunami left 20,000 dead or missing and damaged cooling systems at the Fukushima nuclear plant created the worst atomic disaster in the world since Chernobyl in 1986. The country is still struggling as the country attempts to rebuild damaged areas and tourists are slow to make their way back to Japan.

Erin De Santiago, International Travel Examiner
October 26, 2011 – Like this? Subscribe to get instant updates.

Continue reading on Examiner.com Up to twenty million tons of Japan tsunami debris headed for Hawaii – National International Travel | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/international-travel-in-national/up-to-twenty-million-tons-of-japan-tsunami-debris-headed-for-hawaii#ixzz1c1ozO0Rn

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Earthquake Shifted Nuclear Fuel Casks at Virginia Power Plant

September 3, 2011 at 4:39 pm (Global Events, Health and wellness, News and politics)
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Earthquake Shifted Nuclear Fuel Casks at Virginia Power Plant.

Earthquake Shifted Nuclear Fuel Casks at Virginia Power Plant

Federal regulators say last week’s East Coast earthquake caused the shift of massive casks storing nuclear fuel at Virginia’s North Anna nuclear power facility. According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the 5.8-magnitude earthquake moved the casks an inch to four inches on their concrete pad. It is the first time a U.S. earthquake has ever caused such a shift of nuclear casks in the United States. The plant’s operator says the casks sustained no damage and are not a threat.

The news comes as a government review has found the risk of an earthquake triggering a major accident at U.S. nuclear plants is far greater than previously thought. According to the Associated Press, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission analysis says the North Anna plant is 38 percent more likely to suffer core damage from an earthquake than it was 20 years ago.

Link:  http://www.democracynow.org/2011/9/2/headlines#8

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Documents indicate earthquake exceeded North Anna specifications

August 31, 2011 at 11:36 pm (Global Events, Health and wellness, News and politics)
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Documents indicate earthquake exceeded North Anna specifications.

« Why the Fukushima disaster is worse than Chernobyl | Main | Over 50 rem per year radiation dose rate measured in town near Fukushima Daiichi »
Monday
Aug292011

Documents indicate earthquake exceeded North Anna specifications

The August 23, 2011 earthquake centered just 4 miles from the North Anna nuclear power plant in Mineral, Virginia has prompted an “augmented inspection team” of the reactor by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission following the initial disclosure that the 5.9 magnitude quake’s ground acceleration likely exceeded the design specifications of the nuclear reactor.

The two unit reactor site automatically scrammed following the earthquake that shook most of the East Coast and damaged structures and monuments 90 miles away in Washington, DC when the power plant’s electrical switchyard failed to maintain a power connection to the electrical grid. Three of the four emergency diesel generators powered up as needed but a fourth generator failed due to loss of cooling water.

However, one immediate concern focuses on the miles and miles of inaccessible and uninspected buried pipe that carry tritium contaminated radioactive water under the entire reactor complex.  While the NRC “augmented” inspection will look over many of the “safety-related” components of the reactors, the federal agency has turned over all of its inspection and enforcement oversight of these inaccessible pipes carrying cancer causing radioactive tritium to a “voluntary initiative” run by the nuclear industry itself.  The question of whether or not this radioactive water is now leaking out of broken buried pipes under the reactor complex into groundwater around the Lake Anna area is chiefly up to the industry to self report; a controversy identified by Beyond Nuclear in its 2010 report “Leak First, Fix Later.”

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Extreme weather taking a huge toll on global food production

April 11, 2011 at 1:11 am (Food and drink, Global Events, Health and wellness, News and politics)
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Extreme weather taking a huge toll on global food production.

Weather Extremes

NaturalNews.com
Originally published April 9 2011
Extreme weather taking a huge toll on global food production
by David Gutierrez, staff writer

(NaturalNews) An increase in the prevalence of extreme weather events due to global warming will seriously affect global food production worldwide, climate and agriculture experts are increasingly warning.

“Climate change threatens to make large areas of the planet unsuitable for human habitation and for an adequate level of food production,” writes Ervin Laszlo in the book Quantum Shift in the Global Brain.

“Very few countries are still food self-sufficient — and the internationally available food reserves are shrinking.”

In the past few months, a drought has devastated the Russian wheat harvest, floods have destroyed vast stretches of Pakistani farmland, and a heat wave led to the death of 2,000 cattle in Kansas. As greenhouse gas emissions continue and the planet keeps warming, climatologists are predicting “more and more hot extremes and worse unprecedented extremes and that’s what we’re seeing,” said Neville Nicholls of Monash University in Australia.

The impact of such disasters has an implications far beyond the specific croplands affected. Russia’s decision to ban exports of its shrunken wheat crop, for example, has caused alarm in wheat importing countries such as Egypt. Analysts worry about a return to the food riots of 2007 and 2008, when rising prices led to supply crises in poor countries.

“Over the whole globe all of these changes in climate … are going to cause some real ripples in our capabilities of producing food,” said Jerry Hatfield of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture Research Service.

Crop failures are also expected to hit rice fields in the near future.

“That could start showing up in the next decade or so, because we’re getting these heating peaks already,” said Peter Timmer of the nonprofit Center for Global Development.

Beyond the next few years, researchers admit that they have no idea what our agricultural future will look like.

“In the longer term, all bets are off which crops can and can’t grow,” said Jay Gulledge, the senior scientist at the Pew Center for Global Climate Change in Washington.

Sources for this story include: http://www.reuters.com/article/envi….

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