NV Whino,
Your whole "argument" above is based on a scientifically unwarranted assumption; which is that an earthquake HAS TO be fatal to a nuclear power plant.
Just because your house can't withstand an earthquake doesn't mean that all man-made structures will fail in an earthquake. Imagine that you are in San Francisco when the "Big One" hits, and you are in a local branch of Wells Fargo. The branch manager herds all the staff and patrons into the vault. Do you think you will be safe? Of course you will be safe. Bank vaults are designed to withstand forces much greater than anything an earthquake can muster.
OK - you are concerned about larger structures. What about the Bay Bridge which is currently being retrofitted for seismic reasons, with the grand opening of the new span later this year. ( Hopefully. ) Let's forget about nuclear power plants for the moment, because that always engenders an not useful knee-jerk response.
Let's deal with the Bay Bridge. If a big earthquake struck while the bridge was packed at rush hour, and it collapsed; then there would be much death and carnage. So what do we do? Do we say, "All you people in Oakland and Berkeley that work in San Francisco, need to drive south to San Jose, and then up the peninsula".
NO - we don't do that. We know the faults that can threaten the bridge; at least the big ones. ( The little ones can't generate really big quakes anyway; not like the big ones ) We then calculate just how much force a big quake can exert on the bridge. Then we artificially increase that amount to provide a safety factor.
Then we build a bridge that can withstand that amount of force. Engineers do such things all the time. Your airliner could encounter sudden jarring turbulence. You may hear about those occasionally on the news; the passengers get really shaken up. But do the wings fall off the plane? They do NOT. Why is that?
Because the airliner is designed to take the forces of that sudden jarring turbulence; and MORE.
We design bridges to deal with the forces that could be applied to them. We design airliners to deal with the forces that could be applied to them.
Guess what else. We also design nuclear power plants to withstand the forces that could be thrown at them.
An earthquake doesn't automatically equate to a broken, leaking power plant.
PamW
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