Nukes in the Central Valley: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, oh, and a few questions...

Jobs, jobs, jobs! 11,000 of them in an economically depressed area! Water, water, water, in a drought-stricken area! Clean energy! And it will "...not be located in seismically active or cultural areas..." It's obviously a no-brainer.

It's come to my attention through the twitter universe (thanks @RL_Miller for the catch) that a business group wants to put a "Clean Energy Park" in western Fresno County (The Business Journal, April 7). This park will begin with the construction of wind turbines and a 150-megawatt solar thermal plant, which is a probably a great idea. But the other phase is the construction of two nuclear reactor plants. The plan is to pump up brackish groundwater, desalinate it, and make it available to agriculture in the region to the tune of 1 million acre-feet per year.

I don't know, maybe I'm overthinking this a little bit, but a couple of questions occurred to me as I read about this plan. I realize that brackish groundwater is useless for most human and agricultural uses, but have they considered the effect of removing 1 million acre-feet of water from underground in this area? The south end of the Central Valley has a long history of pumping water from deep aquifers, and one of the more profound outcomes is a serious level of subsidence, i.e. the sinking of the ground surface. In some places, the ground sank 30 feet or more. This, in a flat valley that is barely above sea level. I'm no expert on groundwater issues in that particular area, but how sustainable is removing 1 million acre-feet every year?

Then there is that issue of being located in what is not a "seismically active" area. It takes only a moment to find western Fresno County on the California Geological Survey's online interactive fault map (screen shot below). Um...that's California's Coast Ranges, one of the geologically youngest mountain ranges on the planet, which is riddled with fault lines. The San Andreas, of course, off to the west, but also the Hayward/Calaveras system, the Ortigalita zone, and the O'Neil fault system, and maybe the most worrisome system, the San Joaquin fault. Worrisome because it is not well mapped or understood.

The earthquake history of California is riddled with surprises. Many, or really most of California's earthquakes take place on faults other than the San Andreas. And many damaging earthquakes have taken place on faults that were thought to be inactive, or which were not mapped or known at all. The Coalinga quake of 1983, a few miles to the south of this area, was one of those surprises.

Well, at least the nuclear power plant will be safe from tsunamis. It apparently will be on a floodplain, though, and there are growing concerns of the possibility of a megaflood brought on by an atmospheric river storm (ARkstorm). Will this energy park be ready for something like that?

And of course there are those pesky concerns about "clean" nuclear energy. If we gear up and build dozens more nukes across the country, where will the uranium be coming from? Will the mines be as clean and tidy as the power plants? And where are they going to store the waste? It's been fifty years, and we still don't know where to put highly radioactive spent fuel rods. And when they do decide, do you want the railway system or highway system that they will use to transport those fuel rods to run through your neighborhood? Oh yeah, and what about that whole terrorism thing that certain political parties want us to always worry about? Do you trust that the rent-a-cops they will hire to defend the nuclear site will be up to the job?

Yeah, 11,000 construction jobs is great, though it will turn into just 400 jobs to run the plant. Solar and wind energy are great ideas, but I just don't know about this one....

I Didn't Feel Like Teaching Today...

...but it was the kind of day that demands teaching.

My first day back with classes after the magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami in Sendai, Japan, and the perfect teachable moment. Only it doesn't feel like a teachable moment. I just felt sorrow. So much is going on, and the situation seems to change hour to hour. First it was a magnitude 9.0 earthquake. Those don't happen very often, and that would be enough by itself to toss out the lesson plan of the day and discuss earthquakes and magnitude. But then there was the horrific tsunami that changed everything. 80 miles is a pretty good distance to be from a magnitude 9 quake, and it looks like the structures along Japan's coast weathered the shaking pretty well. But the tsunami raged through and erased towns, wiping them out of existence. Without the tsunami, the quake would have been a footnote. With the tsunami this event became the ultimate human tragedy. Thousands dead, hundreds of thousands homeless. It's hard to even speak of it, much less try and understand the pain and suffering that is taking place across the sea.

But then a new threat; the nuclear power stations began failing one after another in a story that is still unfolding. A human-induced tragedy superimposed over a nature event. We've concentrated radioactive substances in order to produce a form of energy, and the engineers have always told us that it can be made safe. Despite Three-Mile Island, despite Chernobyl, despite the other 30 'incidents' in the past 50 years. We've 'learned' from each of the accidents, it is said. They can't happen elsewhere. We have back up systems. We can't give up nuclear energy they say, because it is the bridge to a renewable energy future. Otherwise we'll have to burn more coal, and coal contributes to global warming. In all of the chattering among the talking heads on cable news this weekend, I have heard nothing of the threat of terrorism at nuclear power plants, nor have I heard anyone talk about where the highly radioactive waste is going to go. We've been avoiding the second problem for 50 years now. Will these questions start emerging, or will they disappear once the meltdown is complete, or once they stop the meltdown from occurring.

So the lesson plan for the day is tossed. We talk about the earthquake, the tsunami, the nuclear power plants. Questions, one after another. Some I can answer, some I cannot.

Can we have a magnitude 9 quake in California? Yes and no. The legendary San Andreas fault can produce events in the range of magnitude 8, about 1/30th of the size of the Sendai earthquake. Many other faults in California have produced dozens of quakes in the range of magnitude 6.5-7.5, and some have been very damaging. Magnitude 9? Not exactly. The Cascadia subduction zone lies off the coast of Northern California, and extends across Oregon and Washington. That system produced a magnitude 9 quake in 1700. Studies show such a quake takes place every few hundred years. Such a quake would have devastating consequences in NorCal and the Pacific Northwest.

Are the nuclear power plants going to have a full meltdown? I have no idea. I'm not an expert, and I don't know that the experts even know.

Will we be hit by a dangerous radioactive cloud? I don't think so, the experts say it will dissipate in the atmosphere and fall into the ocean before it gets here. I'm more worried about the people who live in the vicinity of the power plants. If the worst case scenario happens, the land they have lived on all their lives could be declared uninhabitable. Where will they go?

I'm glad the meltdown didn't happen here. How many of you know where your energy comes from? California has two operating nuclear power plants, both on the coast, both near fault systems. Another mothballed power plant sits unused just 80 miles from us, with all the fuel rods on site. The engineers for the plants say they're ready for whatever happens (I bite my tongue to avoid getting political).

Can a tsunami hit us in the Central Valley the way it did in Japan? No, not likely, but we have a different problem: the Sacramento Delta. The three dozen or so islands in the Delta are 'protected' by century-old levees that are prone to failure from causes as simple as excessive muskrat burrowing. The islands have sunk over the last century, and most are now below sea level. A moderate quake on nearby faults could cause widespread failure and flood the islands with seawater. If it were just lost farmlands, we could deal with it. But the intake pumps for the California Water Project are in the midst of the islands and the inundation could cut off the water supply for 20 million people for months, if not years.

What will the "Big One" do to us? It depends which "Big One" you are talking about. A repeat of the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco? Or the 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake? Or the 1872 Lone Pine quake Or another? All of them were close to magnitude 8, and if they happened again, the results would be profound. And there are dozens of other active fault zones in California. But here in the Central Valley? Harder to say. The 1906 quake was certainly felt in the region, but didn't do much damage in our town. Cities and towns on the west side of the valley will have some serious problems with shaking and liquefaction, but we are on relatively stable sediments.

Where's the best place to live? Kansas or Nebraska I should think. But watch out for tornadoes. Here in California, I would pick the Sierra foothills. Solid bedrock foundations and relatively far removed from the most active fault zones.

I have a question for the class: How many of you have an earthquake emergency kit ready at home (and in the car)? Two or three hands, including my own...

We are not ready...

Do you have questions? Use the comments section to ask and I will answer if I can, or find an answer somewhere.

The Other California: I Need This Like a Hole in the Head

What happens when profit motive collides with good science? I dunno, I'm on vacation!

We escaped the heat of the Central Valley yesterday by taking a drive up Highway 1 from Bodega Bay to Fort Bragg. Bodega Bay is formed by a prominence called Bodega Head that would otherwise be an island, except that sand has linked the island to the mainland and in the process formed a small protected harbor. The Head is a beautiful stretch of coast, with some stunning seacliffs and sea stacks on the Pacifc side.

Many of the seacliffs in this part of the state are formed out of Franciscan sediments or Neogene sandstones, so the cliffs at Bodega Head stand out. They seem steeper and more resistant. A quick look at some boulders at the top of the cliff soon make it clear why:

The rocks are made out of granite! Or, to the geologists eye, a granitic gneiss (note the lineations in the boulder above). These rocks have undergone some stress. The granite seems a bit out of place considering the big California picture; we tend to associate granite with the Sierra Nevada or Southern California, not the North Coast.

Which brings me to this scene, from the bay side of the Bodega Head. There is a quiet little freshwater pond, surrounded by thick vegetation. There was a gathering of egrets in the trees, and despite the season, wildflowers were in abundance. It was a serene setting.

What wasn't clear from the ground perspective is the pond is rectangular. It's artificial, having been dug out of the solid granite, but it was abandoned for some reason and left to be reclaimed by nature. Groundwater maintains the water level. So what happened here?

It turns out that in the late 1950's, an electric utility wanted to build a nuclear power plant on the site. The granitic rock would provide a firm foundation, there was a plentiful supply of water for use as a coolant, and the site was close enough to the Bay Area that transmission infrastructure costs could be kept low. What could go wrong? So they dug this hole to prepare the foundations for the nuke plant.

What could go wrong? We need to ask again what granitic rock is doing here. It is indeed out of place, for this rock originated to the south. At least 200 miles south! It was split off and carried north, 10-20 feet at a time during major earthquakes. There have been perhaps 100,000 of these earthquakes in the last 15-20 million years. As we look across Bodega Bay in this last photograph, we come to realize that Bodega Head lies on the Pacific Plate, while the town of Bodega Bay lies nestled on the North American Plate. The San Andreas fault passes within a few hundred yards of the chosen site for a nuclear power plant!

It is said that local opposition led to the abandonment of the project. Maybe. I've heard that they found evidence of active breaks in the granite within the pit. In any case, it never got built, and today the locals refer to the pond as the "Hole in the Head".

The Other California is a series of blog posts highlighting the kinds of places and features you don't find on the postcards of our beautiful state.