The earthquake felt that the Detroit subway on Friday did not set off seismic alarms at the Fermi 2 nuclear power plant in Monroe County, but did conduct rapid protection inspections, according to DTE Energy.
The 3. 2-degree earthquake recorded Friday night southeast of Detroit Beach, near Monroe, through the U. S. Geological Survey, said the plant was not affected by the earthquake and is functioning normally.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will carry out a pre-programmed virtual assembly on the functionality of the plant at 17:30 on Thursday, those wishing to participate must register online.
The earthquake, rare in Michigan, occurred at 6:55 p. m. , off the coast of Sterling State Park, according to the USGS and about two miles from the nuclear reactor commissioned in 1988.
We decided that the intensity was 9. 2 km, or approximately 5. 71 miles. The USGS first reported that the earthquake reached a magnitude of 3. 4.
On a Saturday, DTE Energy spokesman Stephen Tait said seismic activity did not compromise plant safety.
“There were no alarms or signals at the plant related to seismic activity. Our seismic monitors are designed to alert operators if the safe point of seismic activity is reached; this did not happen in this event due to low-point activity.
“The plant is in solid condition and we are at one hundred percent power. All systems in the plant are operating normally and as expected. “
A magnitude 3. 2 earthquake is considered minor and causes no damage, said Dongdong Yao, a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the University of Michigan who has studied seismic activity in the region.
Residents downstream and those as far away as Bowling Green, Ohio reported feeling the earthquake. Intensity subsided, adding Trenton, La Salle, Grosse Ile, from south to northern Ohio, as far north as Waterford Township and Macomb County. However, this left the Fermi plant unperturbable, authorities said.
Tait stated that, as a result of seismic activity, the plant followed previously planned inspections and procedures to ensure some safety, which did not imply in particular whether those inspections were complete or if irregularities were found.
“The plant has informed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) of these ongoing procedures. There is no need to inform the NRC,” Tait said.
Ben van der Pluijm, a professor at the University of Michigan in the Department of Earth and Environment Sciences, said reactivations, when latent failures are triggered, are common, but sometimes not giant enough in Michigan to cause damage.
“Nuclear power plants are designed to deal with earthquakes larger than M3 (and aircraft attacks). I’m not sure about Fermi’s precise seismic specifications, but it’s in a low-risk seismic location,” van der Pluijm said.
The plant operated 100 percent on Friday and Saturday after completing a pre-month refueling operation that lasted during the coronavirus pandemic, according to reports from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
NRC had issued a report on the occasion of Saturday night’s earthquake.
Friday’s earthquake came more than a year after the firm recorded a magnitude 4. 0 earthquake on Lake Erie, just off the coast of northeast Ohio, in June 2019, considered an “intraplate” earthquake, USGS officials said on the hour.
In April 2018, a magnitude 3. 6 earthquake occurred near Amherstburg, Ontario, across the Detroit River, about 25 km south of Detroit, and felt at least 40 miles away in parts of Downriver and Dearborn.
The USGS online page states that peak earthquakes in North America east of the Rocky Mountains “occur as rocky bed failures, miles deep. “
However, few earthquakes east of the Rocky Mountains have been definitively connected to mapped geological faults, unlike the stage in plate barriers such as the San Andrés Fault System in California, where scientists can use geological evidence to identify a fault that has produced a giant earthquake and most likely produce giant long-lasting earthquakes. “
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