Inspectors check Virginia nuclear plant for earthquake damage

 

The inspection is unusual, said Scott Burnell, a spokesman for NRC. Such “augmented inspection teams” are dispatched to nuclear plants “infrequently. If I had to put a number on it I’d say once every couple of years.”
During the quake, 36 “scratch plates” at the facility recorded ground motion in three dimensions, said Richard Zuercher, a Dominion spokesman. Preliminary analysis of the plates performed by a seismologist contracted by Dominion showed “the plant may have exceeded design basis for ground-force acceleration,” Zuercher said.
The plant’s reactor containment buildings were built to withstand shaking equal to 12 percent of the force of gravity. Dominion said on the day of the quake that the plant would be safe up to a magnitude 6.2 earthquake. But the amount of shaking such a quake produces varies with distance to the epicenter, depth, and the type of rock the quake occurs in.