Sunday, August 24, 2008

More flies on Indian Point

Well, I'm glad Lamont's press release got picked up by a few news outlets. Of course, the plant issues some ripe manure about 'able to take an M7'. Yeah, an M7 on the other side of the world! I love these things!

In reality, the only thing that could pop a nuclear plant is a close M6 or M7, with the plant right on the hanging wall, getting hit by the 'Fist of God' (like the Japan plant!). If you can assure that you are not that 'lucky' with your location, then your plant is immune from earthquakes. All the work that I had laid in over the years with the old company proves that point with Darlington (if only they'd use it!). Otherwise, they are dancing with that 'probabilistic seismic hazard' confusedness, and good luck with that!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You have to read the method used, to understand the suspect nature of the report. Sykes' researchers did no field work. Old verbal accounts of previous earthquakes were read, and assumptions made from the verbal accounts, just how large the earthquakes might have been. Thus the very first step in the "research" was circumstantial, and based on guess. Next, based on those guessed earthquake sizes, Sykes took four known local earthquake faults, all very small, and decided to bundle them under a new name: "The Stamford-Peekskill seismic zone". After bundling them, Mr. Sykes then "concluded" that so bundled, they might be "dangerous".

Long before approaching the seismological society to publish, Sykes had offered the paper to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for use in his ongoing "Shut Indian Point" campaign.Thus we see a huge issue raised concerning good faith scholarship versus agenda science, concocted to further a political cause, only later being published as almost an afterthought.

Sykes is certainly well known. At 71, he is a fixture of the N.Y. academic scene. Did he bequeath, as his legacy, a tainted though plausible revisionist rewrite, to further Cuomo's agenda? How deeply does Sykes want Indian Point gone? If he deeply cared about the politics, would it have been possible for him to stuff a metericious piece of designer science down the throat of the seismological society, based on his past relationship with them?

More: Sykes estimates 670 and 3400 years as the assumed frequency of repetition, of earthquakes he assumes occurred in the area before Europeans' arrival on the continent. From what oracle did Mr. Sykes obtain knowlege of these assumed pre-historical events? Sykes has put himself in the position of rewriting prehistory in one guess, and then using that assumption to verify his renaming of the four minor faults as a "New Feature" (his second guess). He then doubles back, and supposedly "quantifies" his first guess, based on the assumed existence of his second guess (the newly renamed bundle).

Talk about lifting oneself by your own bootstraps!
Then, based on the two mutually piggybacking guesses, he advises us to do without adequate electricity in the region, forever.

Just how prominent IS this guy?

Can he single-handedly "create" both history, so-called science, AND our future,
all with a single swan song in his career's twilight, for the "furtherance of his beliefs"?

Is this truly science?

Or is it "Agenda science", more similar to "National Socialist Science" or "Marxist Science" of the recent past?

Harold Asmis said...

Yeah! That's why I didn't actually read the article, since I knew I would be disappointed. Lamont is a sad shadow of it's former self, when the nuclear industry was funding seismic research. Sykes reminds me of my last dealings with Tuzo Wilson. It's amazing what happens to old scientists!

Still, any nuclear plant that has not done anything for 30 years is open to the "Grand Accusation". I know that we got hit by these things 10 years ago. The sad fact is that there is no monitoring as good as we have, down in the States, so they couldn't find a live mechanism, if it hit them between the eyes!

These mechanisms (like Hamilton!) are there somewhere, and maybe the nuclear plant is right on top of one! Maybe not.