Israel Matzav

Wikileaks: IAEA warned Japan in 2008 of earthquake damage to nuclear plants

A cable released by Wikileaks discloses that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warned of danger to Japanese nuclear facilities that were only built to withstand magnitude 7 earthquakes on the Richter scale.

The IAEA official told a meeting of the G8's Nuclear Safety and Security Group in Tokyo in 2008 that Japan's safety guidelines were outdated, the cable said.

According to the cable, the official raised concern that safety guidelines for seismic safety were only revised three times in the last 35 years.

"Also, the presenter noted recent earthquakes in some cases have exceeded the design basis for some nuclear plants, and that this is a serious problem that is now driving seismic safety work," the cable noted.

Over at Pajamas Media, Roger Simon considers and quickly rejects the prospect that what happened in Japan will have any effect on Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Not surprisingly, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the man who informed us that there are no homosexuals in Iran, insists that their reactors are modern and earthquake proof (if not resistant to Israeli computer viruses), even though Wikipedia reminds us:

Iran is one of the most seismically active countries in the world, being crossed by several major fault lines that cover at least 90% of the country. As a result, earthquakes in Iran occur often and are destructive.

They list nine Iranian earthquakes of 5.9 or above since 2002, all of which had fatalities and one of which — the 2003 Bam quake — claimed at least 30,000 lives.

With their overweening nuclear ambitions, the mullahs are as likely to blow up their own citizens (and plenty of them) as anybody else, given how things are going. Not that they would care. It’s all part of the chaos, don’t you know? And they evidently think their time — the Mahdi’s time — actually has come.

There are six Arab capitals (Kuwait, Riyadh, Manama, Doha, Abu Dhabi and Muscat) that are closer to the Bushehr nuclear plant than Tehran is. I wonder if their rulers are willing to sacrifice their people for Iran's apocalyptic vision.

Labels: earthquake, Fukushima nuclear power plant, IAEA, Iran

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:20 AM