[californiadisasters] Chance of Tsunami, 9.0 EQ is Small in SoCal & CenCal

Chance of tsunami, 9.0 quake is small in Southern and Central California, easing nuclear plant risks, officials say

The operators of the San Onofre and Diablo Canyon plants say they are able to withstand quakes of magnitude 7.0. Seismologists say a Japan-size quake is not likely locally because there is no subduction zone.

By Catherine Saillant and Abby Sewell, Los Angeles Times

March 15, 2011

Officials tried to reassure Californians on Monday that the kind of nuclear crisis facing Japan was highly unlikely at the state's two nuclear power plants.

Southern California Edison officials acknowledged that the San Onofre nuclear power plant was built to withstand a magnitude 7.0 quake — not the 9.0 temblor that hit Japan. But quake experts said the chance of a similar-sized quake —and a tsunami — occurring in the southern half of California were highly unlikely.

"There's no offshore fault in any of Southern California that's exactly like the one that broke in Japan," said Thomas H. Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center at USC.Steven Day, a seismology expert at San Diego State, said the highest magnitudes believed to be possible at the nearest significant fault lines to the two Central and Southern California plants — the Hosgri fault in the case of Diablo Canyon and the Newport-Inglewood/Rose Canyon fault in the case of San Onofre — would be in the low 7s.

Experts said there was essentially no risk of an earthquake that would generate a tsunami like the one that struck Japan at either site because there is no subduction zone — where one plate slides under another — off the shore.

An earthquake could cause undersea landslides that would potentially generate a tsunami, but it would be of a much smaller scale.

Northern California and the Pacific Northwest are at a greater risk of a major tsunami because of their proximity to the Cascadia subduction zone.

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Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-tsunami-california-20110315,0,7384994.story

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