GEOLOGISTS RAISE CONCERN OVER BHARAT'S NUCLEAR SECURITY
and/or www.mantra.com/jai
Geologists raise concern over India's N-security
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
There is also the big plate movement; the Indian plate subducting
under the Eurasian plate, moving nothwards 6 cm. per year, causing
the raise of the Himalayas by 1 cm. every year.
Plate tectonics move earth masses. Korea just shifted 6 cm. after the
recent Japan earthquake of 8.9 on the Richter scale. The Bhuj
earthquake of 26 Jan.
2001 of 8.3 on Richter scale was also caused by plate tectonics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Himalaya-formation.gif
Source:
US Government website
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Earthquake_Information_for_Pakistan.gif
- S. Kalyanaraman
Geologists raise concern over India's N-security
By Killugudi Jayaraman
16 Mar 2011 05:02:04 PM IST
Bangalore: Despite the chorus of assurances from Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh downward that Indian nuclear plants are safe because
they are away from geological faults that can generate earthquakes or
tsunamis, some of India's leading geologists voiced concern in the
wake of the devastation caused by the 9-magnitude quake in Japan.
K.S. Valdiya, a renowned geologist at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for
Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, is one of those who
believe that complacence will be harmful.
It is true the Dec 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami did not result in
any damage to the Madras Atomic Power Station at Kalpakkam except
causing some flooding, but Valdiya says this was because the tsunami
originated from the subduction zone near Sumatra some 1,400 km away
from India.
"The same subduction zone (where two oceanic plates come together,
one riding over the other), as deep as near Sumatra, continues north
towards the Andaman Islands," Valdiya pointed out.
According to him, had the tsunami originated from near the Andaman
Islands, instead of Sumatra, the waves would have lashed India's
eastern coast with much greater ferocity and travelled much farther
inland.
Many tsunami-generating earthquakes had taken place near the Andaman
Islands and there is no guarantee that in future such mega-events
will not take place there closer to the eastern shore of mainland
India, he maintained.
Valdiya warned that India's west coast is also not immune to
tsunamis. He recalled that in 1945, Mumbai, then known as Bombay, was
lashed by tsunami waves triggered by an earthquake on the Makran
coast, which is another subduction zone in the Arabian Sea.
Most experts have grown up with the belief that there is no
geological fault in peninsular India. But Valdiya said this is not
true.
He said his latest work had confirmed that many of the so-called
"lineaments" that have been identified by remote sensing and field
work along the western coasts of Kerala, Karnataka and Maharashtra
"are actually geological faults" potentially capable of causing
earthquakes.
"Some of these faults are active, some inert and some are 'locked,'
meaning there is no movement taking place," Valdyia told IANS.
There are hundreds of faults with no movement, "but certainly
stresses and strains are accumulating there and when the limit is
exceeded there will be an earthquake," he said.
According to Valdiya, "one cannot simply locate nuclear plants on the
basis of today's hazard zoning map that is based on past occurrences
of earthquakes".
"Just because a fault has not been identified, it doesn't mean the
fault does not exist," he stressed.
Valdiya added that his work has also led to the discovery of a
seismic "hotspot" in the Indo-Gangetic plain that needs to be
addressed.
His findings will soon be published in the journal of the Geological
Society of India.
According to C.P. Rajendran of the Centre for Earth Sciences at the
Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, the biggest earthquake
threat to India is from the Himalayas.
"One of our major concerns should be the 2,500-km long Himalayan
plate boundary that extends from the northwest to northeast, a zone
that hosts potential fault lines that could generate both large and
great earthquakes (magnitude-7 and above)," he said.
There are gaps along the Himalayan axis, like the central Himalayas,
that have remained quiet for too long "that can reasonably be
expected to generate a great earthquake in the foreseeable future,"
Rajendran said.
The northeast Himalayas also host seismic gaps, he said. According to
Rajendran, the Jan 12, 2010, earthquake in Haiti and the Japanese
disaster should motivate geologists to thoroughly review India's
preparedness to tackle quake-related calamities.
"We need to focus both on the earthquake engineering and on the
scientific research of the earthquake processes," he said.
Vineet Gahalaut, senior geologist at the National Geophysical
Research Institute (NGRI) in Hyderabad agreed.
"The Japan region is the best instrumented region in the world and
even there this earthquake occurred as a surprise," he said.
"We need to improve our understanding of the earthquake occurrence
processes. We need more instrumental data," he said.
Are India's geologists prepared to face the Japan-type earthquake in
the country? "No," said Gahalaut.
"The biggest problem is the implementation of building codes and lack
of public awareness," Gahalaut told IANS.
Gahalaut added: "When death toll and economic losses in such a
technologically advanced country like Japan may reach so high,
imagine a country like India, where there is no law on building codes
and almost no public awareness."
Vinod Gaur, a renowned seismologist and former director of NGRI, said
that earthquake and tsunami threats are technologically manageable.
However, "India's record of managing even low-intensity hazards is
dismal".
The official toll from the 9-magnitude earthquake and the tsunami
that struck Japan on Friday is 2,722, but estimates were that the
number of dead would exceed 10,000.
Fears of a nuclear meltdown escalated sharply Tuesday with an
explosion in a third reactor in the Fukushima nuclear plant and a
fire at a fourth leading to an increase in radiation levels that the
government admitted were high enough to impact human health.
http://expressbuzz.com/edition/print.aspx?artid=256992
End of forwarded message from S. Kalyanaraman
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
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and/or www.mantra.com/jai
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
India has unnecessarily jumped into nuclear group; it has its own
energy resources. It does not want to be a swavlambi but wants to be
dependent on others. The benefit goes to those making decisions -
money in the Swiss bank account.
End of forwarded message from A. S.