Some people might remember the piece I did on back of the envelope calculations a little while back. The radioactive leak at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Japan gives an example of why it’s important, and, more importantly, how they can be misinterpreted.
Tim Dunlop wants to know about how they got the estimate of the amount of radioactive material released wrong by 50%. It’s a reasonable question, but in fact it doesn’t matter a jot because the quantities are infinitesimally small.
The radioactive leak was caused by the release of 1200 litres of low-level radioactive waste sitting in barrels around the plant. The total amount of radiation released was 90,000 becquerels - 50 percent more than the original estimate of 60,000 becquerels.
Sounds dangerous, doesn’t it?
Finding natural radioactivity for soil indicates that natural dirt in Iraq (before Saddam Hussein started doing nuclear experiments in it) has somewhere between 24 and 42 becquerels of radiation per kilogram from the radium in it alone. Two tonnes of natural Iraqi dirt (and, no, Iraqi dirt is not particularly naturally radioactive) contains about the same amount of radiation as the couple hundred gallons of low-level waste spilled from the drums sitting outside the nuclear reactor. Given the tiny quantities, does it really matter if it’s the equivalent of two or three tonnes of dirt (it’s actually probably less than a tonne, because radiation in the soil also comes from the uranium and its decay products) spilt?
Which brings us to the other reason why the Japanese engineers weren’t too concerned about whether was two-thirds or three-quarters of bugger-all radiation from the low-level waste drums. There were two radiation leaks at the nuclear plant. As well as the spilled drums, some radioactive gas was vented from the plant. How much radiation? 300 million becquerels. Given that, whether it was 60 or 90,000 in the drums is rather here nor there.
So should we panic about 300 million becquerels? One becquerel means that one atom of whatever it is undergoes radioactive decay per second. So so while 300 million becquerels sounds a lot, it’s not very much at all, given the number of atoms in a gram of matter is more than 20 digits long! In the Three Mile Island accident in the USA in 1979, about 480 petabecquerels of radioactivity in the was released through gas venting. That’s 480,000,000,000,000,000 becquerels - more than 1.6 billion times as much radioactivity. And the maximum dose anyone received from that accident? Less than a third of the radiation that people are exposed to every year. Most people near the plant got about the same amount as from a chest X-Ray, or a day or two of normal radiation exposure.
So, in that context, whether 60,000 or 90,000 becquerels of radioactivity in the material spilt into the ocean is really in the highest levels of irrelevance, and there’s probably a harried Japanese nuclear engineer somewhere who’s cursing and swearing because his rough calculations showing that it was irrelevant has been so misinterpreted.
Would you kindly stop putting facts into the conversation? RADIATION IS EVIL, just accept it. Evil like Darth Vader and Jar-Jar Binks. What happened in Japan proves that there’s nothing atoms like doing more than busting out and raping babies! Even the ones called ‘low-level’ radiation nuclears are bad and naughty and in league with Rupert Murdoch and Dennis Shanahan and John Howard!
Oh, hold my sides, you’re a riot, Jaques. it’s a wonder the Chaser team haven’t snapped you up yet.
OK, fact: The human body really has no tolerance for radiation at all, so the argument regularly touted everywhere that “X is about the same as the radiation in the earth / the radiation on a plane / the radiation in an X ray”, is really based on a fuzzy assumption that everything natural is good, or they are trying to snow their opponents because they think that they believe everything natural is good. The fact is that as far as the cells in your body is concerned, any radiation is to be deplored, so your piece of “hyperbole” is actually true on a physiological level. Therefore, to say it’s safe to experience say, double the “natural” background radiation or double the amount of the X-ray your dentist gives you, is at best an honest mistake or at worst a pea and thimble trick.
When you do get that X ray, note the nurse puts a thick lead apron and hightails it out of there (I’ll assume in your case Jaques, they skip the bit where they make sure you’re not pregnant.) That happens for a reason.
On the surface of it, Robert, you are perfectly correct. On the grand scale of things this leak is hardly a leak. But on the other hand It is the long lived nature of the radioactive material that causes the problem. Other toxic materials break down in real time to reduce damaging effects, but nuclear mnaterial remains until it decays regardless of what chemical that it morphs into.
You are making the suggestion that there is a level of leaking that does not warrant monitoring because compared to some other situations the amount of material does not read above background levels and therefore is tolerable. But that thinking leads to the possibility that such leaks can be allowed on a regular basis. This is how most toxic accumulations start. “It is only a few barrels, it won’t matter”, can you here human logic ringing true in that thought. And then nature takes over and starts accumulating and concetrating through biological mechanisms (bacteria, plants, fish, etc) and then out of the blue people start developing strange diseases.
You have got to be worried about what the Chinese are going to do with this technology. They will no doubt do a brilliant job of establishing solid and reliable facilities which will run well, right up to the point where someone has a gambling debt that needs to be paid immediately and then the problems begin. I was just listening on the ABC yesterday to a report on the future of Macau as the gambling capital of China. In the report there are the usual concerns expressed about the victims one of which was a woman who lost US$100,000 in one night and was facing selling here manufacturing businesses in inland China. This is one powerful corruption motivator for desparate competitive people.
You can spill a can of paint or a bottle of milk, but you cannot spill a can of nuclear toxic waste and still sleep at night.
I think you mean “before George Bush I and II started firing depleted uranium shells over it”.
This seems like a rather pointless article. Are you saying that all leaks are ’safe’? Because, fyi, they’re not.
As far as I can tell, you are basically saying “measuring something in a very small unit can make it sound bit when really it’s not.” So I could write a similarly insightful article noting that I am 1.84 MILLION microns tall - sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? But fear not, I will not be trampling your cities underfoot any time soon, because one micron is actually very very small. QED.
To me, this Japanese leak brings home one point - if we want to replace oil with nuclear power, which the film Crude Awakening suggests would take upwards of 10,000 nuclear plants, then we are going to have more leaks and accidents caused by both human error and natural disasters.
Depleted uranium is very weakly radioactive, Patrick. As munitions go, it’s infinitely less dangerous over time than cruel ones like antipersonnel mines, claymore mines and clusterbombs. I’d much rather plough a field with DU rounds in it than unexploded ordnance.
Don’t take my word for it, through—take the WHO’s.
My bold, because the principle also applies to nuclear power. The radioactive accidents that will happen have to be compared against the consequences that will come of unchecked coal-fired energy generation.
The nurse hightails it out of the x-ray room because they get exposed to it 20 times a day 260 times a year. ie around 3000 times as much as most people will get in a year.
Robert’s point is what is the additional risk - about half of bugger all. How does it compare with other risks you face day to day? Do you avoid all contact with all other people during winter because of the increased chance of catching a cold and dying?
PatrickB: my point was that “ooh, the scary nuclear people are trying to hide their secret spills! RUN FOR THE HILLS!” when we’re arguing over the difference between 1 and 2 percent of sweet stuff-all.
Helen: my point is that the natural exposure to radiation is billions of times higher than the potential exposure from this. Drinking alcohol is bad for you too, but is having 0.0001 milliter of extra beer over your lifetime going to make a difference? Incidentally, the natural background radiation varies by a couple of orders of magnitude in some places, but there’s no evidence of increased cancer levels in those people.
BilB: depends on what sort of nuclear material it is. Some of it decays in a few days, weeks, or months. By contrast, lead, arsenic, mercury, and so on are dangerous forever. Yes, checks do need to be maintained, but, frankly, the low-level waste that spilled is so many orders of magnitude below the dangerous level that you could spill the world’s entire inventory and it wouldn’t be a radiation hazard, just a large mess.
Fiasco,
DU not quite so depleted. Aparently DU has a resurgence of release intensity some time (I don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of years later) but there is a point where the radioactive intensity leaps up to be come a very real danger, where it stays for some considerable time before diving down again.
Well done, Mr Merkel!!!
Ok…in the overall scheme of things no it’s not a big leak. That said it depends a lot on what is leaking. The low-level liquid should not be too much of an issue as most facilities are setup for that (painted floors/walls to minimise seepage, allowing easy cleanup, etc). Techiniques for cleaning that kind of contamination were developed in the 60’s (sorry, I don’t have my books at hand - will send web references later if I can!), provided that the spillage was contained within the buildings.
As for the gas - it is more of an issue as even though they’re likely to be short-lived isotopes (probably Xenon, Krypton, etc) they have an easier path into the body (the lungs). The dosage would not depend strongly on the amount of Bq but rather the gas mixup and the prevailing winds/stack height/etc. As long as the “downwinders” stay inside with closed windows this historically hasn’t been much of an issue. Ironically the classic “bad sci-fi movie” advice of “stay at home - nothing to see here” would be the best in this situation.
Guess I’d better hunt for references now - the above is based on memory!
As a youngster I helped my old man build himself a lead brick shield for his isotope imaging practise. I remember asking “isn’t this stuff meant to be injected into the patients? What’s the deal with worrying about drawing some into a syringe a foot out from your body?”. Prolonged, cumulative exposure, obviously enough.
Still, I’m sure a weekend’s exposure to lead fumes making the bricks probably fucked me up plenty too.
Steve, I agree it’s more complicated; the type of gases released is importan. But the sheer orders of magnitudes smaller exposure would indicate that it’s highly unlikely to pose a risk.
The liquid waste that spilled drained into the ocean, where it was probably undetectable within minutes of the spill.
You might think we’re arguing about that. I’d say most people are arguing that, even though this particular incident doesn’t seem to be too significant, it does remind us of the possibilities of much more severe incidents. And if I were to read a subtext into your post, it would be “nuclear power is safe.”
I was criticising the “Saddam” comment, not saying that depleted uranium is worse than APMs and cluster bombs.
Robert
You might like to explore a little bit further than the back of an envelope. Namely a little bit of history and a little bit of context for the experience of Japanese people. I’ll point you in the direction of the Chronology and Press Reports of the Tokaimura Criticality in 1999 and suggest you look for the answers posed by the New York Times
The case was characterised by poor safety procedures, corner cutting, lax standards, a culture of corporate secrecy, and some of the most economically vulnerable members of society -day labourers- being exposed to unacceptable risks.
This is a pattern that has often been repeated in a broad range of Japanese companies and has been an uncomfortable feature of the painful changes of the post-bubble economy.
The eventual risks of this particular accident aside, suspicion in this case is not out of order and your characterisation of it misplaced and more than a little patronising.
BilB, I haven’t read anything like that, and I’d be interested to know more details about it. Are you saying that depleted uranium changes its rate of decay, or have I misunderstood you?
PatrickB: yes, I do happen to think nuclear power is very safe, by any sensible standards.
BilB: that is a topic worthy of serious discussion!
Tokiamura was indeed the result of severe flaws in the plant’s design, siting, and procedures, and, by extension, governmental oversight. However, despite all that, what do you reckon is safer - working in that plant or working on a building site?
Fiasco,
That is what I read on a web site , yes.
http://www.wise-uranium.org/rup.html
and elsewhere.
I do not, personally, profess to have any knowledge in this area.
Despite all that, how was the play Mrs Lincoln?
Is this a building site where I’m told not to worry about nail guns and goggles aren’t necessary? Crushed by a tilt-up wall or slow death by organ failure? Do I get to choose which one I live next to? Does the building site have asbestos on it? Does choosing one make the risks on the other one inconsequential? Can I do hypothetical work on a hypothetical worksite?
Let’s put this another way. If someone borrows your car and brings it back the next day with a dent, it’s not a big accident. If you find out later that they were last seen getting into the car after a good showing at the ten dollar pint and jagermeister shot night, then how big an accident was it? And if the person has another accident and they point out that it’s just a taillight and then they pull out an envelope and start doing a few sums, should you ask a few more questions?
I dunno, I find it reassuring. Despite being hit by a massive earthquake - one that killed 9 people and injured hundreds - almost directly under it, it still survived without a significant radiation release. What more do you want?
I guess one way I look at it is like the difference between a car and a plane. Something goes really wrong with a car, it might be really bad for a few people, but most likely it just breaks down. Something goes really wrong with a plane, it’s really bad for all aboard and anyone who happens to be in the area at which it reaches 0 altitude.
I think there’s analogy to nuclear versus other forms of power. A coal power station malfunctions seriously, and you’ve got localised problems at worst. A nuclear power station malfunctions badly, and you’ve got Chernobyl II (and yes, I know that the design of Chernobyl was inherently faulty etc etc etc but it could still happen again).
I try to be rational, as a rule. So I understand the many advantages of nuclear power. I just don’t know if I think that the “worst case scenario” warrants the risk. To take my analogy a step further, there’s a good reason why the average punter doesn’t fly a jet plane to work, and there’s arguably a good reason why 10,000+ nuclear power plants spread across the globe is a bad idea too.
Another hypothetical: let’s say nuclear power does become the default for most countries, and then there’s a serious war somewhere. What are the chances of a stray missile or bomb hitting a reactor? What would the consequences be? What about the temptation to hit one deliberately?
That’s not a sufficient analogy, PatrickB. It’s the consequences of coal-fired energy working perfectly but prodigiously that’s the concern.
Yes, to the tune of roughly 20,000 Yanks per year.
Even if you take Greenpeace’s estimate that Chernobyl will ultimately result in 100,000 premature deaths, it’s the equivalent of two Chernobyls a decade in the USA alone.
Why does Patrick think there are 10,000 nuclear power plants? It’s a few hundred at the most.
The average punter doesnt take a jet plane to work because jets are expensive, he commutes maybe 10 miles and there probably isnt a landing strip at work either. People who commute 500 miles do take jet planes.
If you learn to read, that is the estimate of what it would take to replace oil as a source of electricity.
So if those things weren’t issues there’d be no obstacle?
I’ve tried to clarify my analogy here…
The Chernobyl tradgedy is just the immediate deaths. It is the ongoing loss of 46,000 square kilometres of land that has been contaminated as a result of the toxic discharge:
6
Children of Chernobyl
US/Ukraine
http://www.childrenofchornobyl.org/
http://www.childrenofchornobyl.org/site/about/letter-from-the-president/index
About Us / Health Impact
In Ukraine, over 4.6 million hectares contaminated, some of the most productive agricultural land in the world …. 1.2 million people continue to live on lands contaminated by “low-level” radiation, outside the 30 kilometer zone; approximately 1,800 villages affected … Gradual seepage of radiation into water table, especially the Dnipro River and its tributaries, threatens water supply for millions of people in coming decades …. Shortly after the explosion, thousands of children and adults in Ukraine and Belarus were stricken with acute radiation sickness ….
This would only have to happen once on the Eastern Seaboard to render any benefit from nuclear power totally pointless.
Any equipment designer is going to say that his nuclear plant is totally safe, risk free, cheap power supplier,,,,,,……until it blows up. He will disappear into history and another bunch of people will come along to say flawed design, predictable, flawed experiment, old technology,,,,,,,. It may take fifty, sixty years to happen and the probability that it will happen will increase as those years go by. The issue is that it is a totally unnecessary risk in the first place.
The fact that the conversation arises from a nuclear “accident” (how ever small), makes the point.
that of coarse was ..”tradgedy is not just the immediate”.. and the “Australian Eastern Seaboard”
There is one other issue here, and that is that as time goes by lands put at risk by nuclear plants will become increasingly more valuable and the signficance of political decisions made now will become more poignant. Gone are the days when the military could carve of chunks of land for target practice and litter it with leathal junk then move on to another area. And the same goes for industry. It may have only been a few drums stacked against the fence in Japan that fell over and spilled in a force whatever earthquake and the reactor core didn’t melt down, spectacular, but I wonder what the people who live around the reactor now are feeling about their neighbour. And I wonder what their realestate values are doing now.
That’s just flat wrong, Bill. If you read the UNSCEAR reports on the matter (links here), there were about 300 cases of acute radiation sickness amongst cleanup workers.
Thousands of children later got thyroid cancer from drinking contaminated milk, but that is not acute radiation sickness.
Helen says:
“OK, fact: The human body really has no tolerance for radiation at all…”
Rubbish.
“A comprehensive survey of the population exposed to high-level natural radiation is presented. The population living in Karunagappally taluk in Kerala, India, presents a unique opportunity for studies on the health effects of chronic exposure to low-level radiation. The environmental radiation emanates largely from the thorium deposited mostly along coastal areas. In certain locations on the coast, it is as high as 70 mGy/year and on average is 7.5 times the level seen in interior areas. Using portable scintillometers, radiation levels in more than 66,306 houses were measured; outside levels were also measured in the same house compound. Of the total population of 400,000, 100,000 lived in areas with high natural radiation. Information on lifestyle, socio-demographic features, occupation, housing, residence history, and tobacco and alcohol use was obtained by house-to-house visits and enumeration of every resident individual. A population cancer registry system has been established to obtain cancer incidence rates. In this preliminary analysis, there is no evidence that cancer occurrence is consistently higher because of the levels of external gamma-radiation exposure in the area. Further dosimetry-level studies are needed along with biological studies. Studies of soil, thoron-in-breath, and the radon-thoron levels in houses are ongoing, and further case-control analyses are continuing.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10564957&dopt=Abstract
BTW, did anyone see Dr Helen Caldicott make an absolute foll of herself last night on “difference of Opinion” on the ABC?
She believes there is a conspiracy involving Halliburton to import nuclear waste into Oz!!!
Robert,
That was a straight extraction from a web sight dedicated to the issue. I do not stand by the exact accuracy of the claims as I have not studied the material. I was really looking for the affected lands area which I understood to be about 16,000 sq klms. This group are saying 46,000 sq klms. Not that the exact area is important, it is the potential scale.
As you know my platform on this is that the probability of another Chernobyl is extremely small. At the moment in Australia it is absolutely zero. By allowing any significant nuclear power generation (other than Lucas Heights) that probability increases from nothing to something. Based on the “give an inch take a mile” tendency of human ambition added to the statistical probability that most machinery will fail in some way at some time then the chances of a significant nuclear accident in Australia increase to something measureable as the number of nuclear plants increases and time passes. Any significant land contaminating accident nulls the benefits of such equipment.
If there were not better alternatives then I would have no option but to support nuclear fission until fusion power was possible. But there are better and cheaper non carbon based alternatives to nuclear power, as you well know.
No doubt the Children of Chernobyll charities are well intentioned but they have a vested interest in exaggerating the consequences of Chernobyll. So do Greenpeace etc - not necessarilly as well intentioned.
Acute Radiation Sickness was confined to a few hundred plant employees and emergency workers - it affected virtually none of the general population. There have been 4K cases of Thyroid cancer in children of whom 15 had died by 2002. Presumably this might have been largely avoided by importing milk, otherwise remedial measures seem to have been pretty effective considering it did happen in the USSR. Other than the thyroid cancer there seems to be no statistically detectable excess cancers - but no doubt some have ocurred. The IAEA report speculatively suggests 4K extra fatal cancers lifetime for the most affected population of 600K. But thats in the context of about 100K fatal cancers for such a population in any case. Apart from the Exclusion Zone agriculture seems to be back to normal - most of the radioactive waste particles did have short halflives.
You can read the IAEA report at http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyll/chernobyll.pdf.
Patrick, your comments on the number of nuclear plants required to “replace oil as a source of electricity” are just absurd. Oil is largely used in engines, mainly transport. It is not used to generate electric power except in emergency backup generators, remote area applications like mine sites, and to a greater extent in less developed countries - where electricity usage is low anyway. The proportion of Australia’s electricity that comes from burning oil is miniscule - and the same is true of all western countries.
It is a common public misconception to conflate “oil” and “electricity” but you are entirely misinformed. The Japanes movie (!!) you refer to probably envisages having small nuclear engines in all planes and trains, which has nothing to do with electricity supply.
BilB: fair enough, but that particular piece of misinformation is one that gets my goat because Helen Caldicott made a similar claim about Three Mile Island in her most recent book “Nuclear Power is Not the Answer to Global Warming or Anything Else”.
Acute radiation sickness is an obvious, identifiable illness that appears shortly after radiation exposure. Diagnosing it is not that hard either - the standard way is to do blood counts. The idea that there could have been thousands of undiagnosed cases of it beggars belief, even in the Soviet Union, let alone the United States as Caldicott claimed in her book about TMI.
Well now I’m going to have to read through all of the information to find out why these people are making this claim. It is interesting.
The whole nuclear thing is looking more like a dead duck with Howard all but gone. This suits me just fine. If nuclear power becomes a reality in the future it has a better chance of being done correctly for the right reasons without the pressure cooker approach that Howard set up.
Bill,
What Patrick is probably alluding to is the prospect of electric powered vehicles being charged from home power sockets.
This is one of the solutions that best fits inner urban dwellers, and there are some excellent vehicles on the way to take advantage of this possibility. This is why we have to get the whole power generation alternative underway immediately. The power consumption picture is going to become more complex in the near future.
If you would really need 10,000 nuclear plants to put everyone in electric cars then that is (another) pretty good reason why electric cars are never going to catch on.
Currently it is fact that about 15% of the worlds electricity is from nuclear - lets assume there are 200 nuclear plants operative. 10000 similar nuclear plants to supply elrectric cars implies that we would need about 7.5 times our entire current electricity supply to replace oil in cars!
Can’t see that happening.
Bill: 10,000 is a very considerable overestimate, methinks. Total energy obtained from oil is not that much higher than from coal, and electric cars are much more efficient users of energy than today’s models.
Sure of course you wouldn’t need that much electricity. Those 10,000 fission plants just seemed to be Patrick and/or BilB’s view.
Bill,
You’ve got that wrong if you think that I am in any way supporting Nuclear Fission reactors for Australia. Australias National power demand peaked at 33 gigawatts the other day (supposedly). That would be supplied in my scheme of things from thirty one gig Concentrating Solar Thermal Power stations and a small number of Geothermal Power stations providing non solar balancing, along with a measure of wind, solar photovoltaic, and biomass facilities. The all up investment for this could be under the 100 billion dollars. That would supply todays power needs. Then that would need to be expanded to cover electric vehicle charging.
Australia has no energy problem. It has a leadership problem.
BilB -
So what exactly is a “Concentrating Solar Thermal Power Station” ? Are any of these CSTPS beasties currently operating anywhere on earth?
Similarly Geothermal is entirely unproven, except at shallow depths. There are no shallow geothermal resources in Australia - the nearest is probably Roturua.
Unfortunately we can’t rely on science fiction for our electricity supplies.
Bill: yes there are. There’s been one operating on a multi-megawatt scale out in the Nevada desert for many years.
See this 4 Corners program for details.
Robert
If you actually read the transcript, the Californian solar station is said to be 20 years old. Presumably it uses rather different techmnology to the other current initiatives mentioned by 4 Corners. It seems to be the only one actually built in California and despite Scwarzeneggers recent renewable targets there seem to be no plans to build any more solar stations in California - which makes it obvious that solar is currently uncompetitive even with other renewables and even in a sunny climate.
The solar station at Vegas hasn’t been built yet (though it sounds like it probably will be). The transcript makes it clear that it is high cost too and made viable by the geographic isolation of Vegas and presumably some form of subsidy.
I suspect for the Ausra thing to go anywhere it needs to demonstrate both that its own technology works (it doesn’t as yet according to MacFarlane), AND that that rather vague energy storage and conversion technology works as well.
Solar System’s project at Mildura could kindly be described as “speculative”.
You should be aware that startup technology companies and venture capitalists are not noted pessimism.
Bill: Ausra’s technology has been demonstrated to produce hot steam in quantity, they just haven’t hooked it up to a steam turbine.
Clearly, it “works” at some level. The key question, however, is how well it works and how much it costs to build, and what their storage technology is (they’ll be heating up something, but whether it’s water, oil, or solid matter is anybody’s guess).
Ausra’s technology may produces steam (whatever the quantity), but seemingly it still hasnt been hooked up at Liddel in years - tends to suggest that the quantity is small. Of course it “works at some level”, but any source of heat can produce steam.
The “storage and conversion” technology they vaguely allude to sounds as though it would be quite revolutionary and have applications well beyond solar power. If so it would be worth billions, and probably tens of billions. Chances of an outfit like Ausra coming up with a revolutionary solar technology AND a revolutionary energy storage technology are remote.
An investor like Vinod Khosla probably has stakes in dozens of assorted technology ventures at any one time. Nothing necessarilly sinister about that, but only a pretty slim percentage ever work. There have probably been 15-30 or so “alternative power” outfits listed on the ASX in recent decades, I doubt any have had any significant sucess; except those who simply applied established technology - wind farms, landfill methane etc.
I have for a long time maintained that you can make nuclear power safe, and you can make it cheap, but it is not currently possible to make it both at once. And it won’t be for at least another twenty years, at least with uranium based technologies. I have an open mind when it comes to thorium.
This incident has reinforced that view for me. As Robert says, it does seem to back up the idea that these plants are safe - a big quake (although far from the biggest) right underneath it and we get nothing of great danger. On the other hand they are talking about the thing being shut down for over a year. That has to play hell with the economics of such a capital intensive project. How long would it take to fix a solar plant suffering similar damage?