Koeberg Sits Right On A Fault Line
Yes that’s right folks.
After all the mayhem caused by the Tsunami and earthquake in Japan, it’s horribly disconcerting to find out that Koeberg Nuclear power station sits just 8 kilometres away from the Milnerton fault line which is off the coast out to sea.
Koeberg Nuclear Power Station
Now the Japanes are a very organised bunch, so I shudder to think what our crowd of feeble minds would do with a disaster of that scale… More concerning to me personally is that I live right here on this coast!
I did some research to find out exactly what effect this fault line has had if any over the years. Well the biggest earthquake resulting from this bad boy is one on the same scale as the one which hit Christchurch recently, 6.3 on the Richter Scale.
Cape Town’s last major earthquake happened 200 years ago. It was caused by this fault which had its epicentre in present-day Milnerton, and it is estimated to have measured between 6.3 and 6.5.
Apparently some cracks were seen in Milnerton, right where Royal Ascot is now. Wouldn’t be the last time crack was spotted in Milnerton.
Koeberg is built to withstand a quake of 7 on the Richter scale… not much margin for error there fellas.
Seismic experts have rated the earthquake risk as “rare, but a very real threat for Cape Town”.
Looks like we might need to take the Knights of the Missing Round Table and their Cape Town Tsunami watch a wee bit more seriously…
You can read more here.
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