Despite Nuclear Plant Safety Assurances, Legislator Renews Millstone Concerns

One day after a magnitude 5.8 earthquake rocked Virginia and sent tremors throughout the East Coast, Suffolk County Legis. Jay Schneiderman, I-Montauk, expressed concerns about the safety of a Connecticut nuclear power plant less than 20 miles from the East End.

However, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission official in charge of overseeing safety at the Waterford-based Millstone Nuclear Power Plant and an expert seismologist both agreed that the quake posed no harm to the facility, and that such concerns were unfounded.

"Nothing about this earthquake challenged this site in any way, shape or form," NRC senior inspector Schaffer said. "The plant responded as expected in this situation."

Schneiderman said Wednesday he was doubtful of the facility's earthquake resistance after hearing the plant did not register the quake on its seismic instruments and didn't shut down after the tremors struck. 

"This is an aging nuclear facility and they're bragging about it was so small that it they didn't pick it up," Schneiderman said. "Maybe their seismic sensors aren't working, maybe their radiation sensors aren't working. It seems suspicious to me."

Schneiderman in April after a power plant in Fukushima Daiichi, Japan overheated and melted down following a disastrous earthquake and tsunami, leaving over 15,000 dead and several more still missing.

NRC Inspector Schaffer, a four-year veteran at the site, said Tuesday's quake did not trip any of the seismic monitors at the Connecticut nuclear plant because it was too small to be flagged by the sensors. While Schaffer admitted some workers on site noticed the quake, he said he was at the plant during the Virginia quake and felt nothing.

"You don't want to shut the plant down for no reason," Schaffer said.

A seismology station at Yale University 40 miles west of the facility did detect the earthquake, but the noticeable effects of the quake, such as swaying or rocking, were categorized as "weak" to "none," according to a map of the quake's intensity from the United States Geological Survey.

Schaffer said the facility was designed to safely survive a magnitude 5.65 earthquake and remain online.

"That's a 5.65 [magnitude earthquake] locally, not hundreds of miles away," Schaffer said.

John Ebel, a seismologist from Boston College, clarified this claim. Ebel, the director of the Weston Observatory, which measures seismic activity across New England, said buildings are not designed to withstand magnitude and that Schaffer was oversimplifying a complex process.

Instead, he said facilities like nuclear reactors are based on withstanding "ground acceleration," or how much the Earth moves and at what frequency. He added that for the sake of public debate, the ground acceleration is converted into the more-recognizable "magnitude," but this conversion is inaccurate and doesn't take into account that acceleration often varies.

"Even though we'd like there to be a simple relationship, there just is none," Ebel said.

High frequency acceleration, the kind that sounds like a truck rumbling by during an earthquake, and low-frequency acceleration, a rocking or swaying motion, affect different parts of each plant differently, according to Ebel. Earthquakes, he added, are a combination of all kinds of frequencies.

Many facilities built in the 1970s used an outdated method of figuring out the forces to build against, Ebel said. Yet he was encouraged by a 2010 NRC study that looked at nuclear reactors with modern formulas and singled out 27 reactors along the Central and Eastern U.S. to be further looked into.

The Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, N.Y. was first on the list. The Millstone facility, which was the cause of Schneiderman's concern, was deemed safe.

Ebel was also encouraged that the North Anna Nuclear Generating Station in Virginia, which was also on the list of 27 borderline plants and took a nearly direct hit from the 5.8 quake, shut down safely.    

Schneiderman said he was unconvinced and said he will look into reviewing evacuation plans for the area.