By Peter Galuszka
Today’s earthquake near Mineral should shake up a lot of thinking.
All sorts of things happened about 10 minutes to 2 p.m. The Pentagon was evacuated. Airplanes up and down the East Coast were put on ground hold. A stairwell in Richmond is said to have collapsed.
As for me, I was sitting under a pine tree in Nottoway County. I had had meetings in Richmond in the morning and then a doctor’s visit (good result) and I decided to take my trusty, 11-year-old German Shepherd for a midday break.
We drove to Fort Pickett near Blackstone and sat in the shade of a pine tree watching paratroopers jump from a lumbering C-130 transport plane. A few hundred feet away were two sea-grey Navy Seahawk helicopters. One started its jet engines. Then the ground started to tremble, and tremble and tremble. I was amazed the jet turbine could shake things so. It lasted a good 30 seconds. The pine needles shook. I actually thought how amazing that these few World War II era hangers could last so long, given all the shaking from planes and helicopters.
It wasn’t until 10 minutes later when I heard it was a 5.9 earthquake centered, as they usually are, near Mineral. It’s the same approximate location of an earlier quake in 2003. I had been on the phone for a work matter with a colleague and she said, “Gee, I have to stop drinking so much coffee.”
The U.S. East Coast is not as prepared as the West Coast is for earthquakes. We’ve had some — notably in Charleston S.C. Dominion’s two North Anna reactors are near the epicenter and word is that they lost power but diesel generators shut them down safely. I also learned that North Anna is designed only to handle a 5.9 to 6.1 level quake. We’re already there.
Years ago, when North Anna was proposed, environmentalists endured some rather nasty attacks from then-Virginia Electric Power Co. for suggesting that it might be a bad idea to locate nukes near a fault. The fault is ancient and never active, Vepco’s then-aggressive flaks insisted. You know how it is. Anyone who dares question Big Business is tarred as negative, regressive and un-American. Don’t believe me? Read this blog.
Granted, a 5.9 level quake is nothing like the 9.0 level one that struck Fukushima, Japan, causing the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl earlier this year. That quake turned the growing popularity of commercial nuclear power on its head. Germany will now get rids of its reactors over the next 20 years. Still, Southside politicians and farm owners want Virginia to become a locus of uranium mining near Chatham.
There’s plenty to think about. And who knows? Maybe the Baconauts and Fox “fair and balanced” News will try to afix blame on Barack Obama. Why not? They are blaming him for everything else.
