China Earthquake Coverage
Project Related
Three Gorges landslide threat forces villagers to flee
Nearly 100 villagers living upstream from the Three Gorges dam have been forced to leave their homes under threat of a landslide, which officials fear was disturbed during the filling of the dam’s reservoir last year, Xinhua News Agency reported last week. Read on for more info. (Photo by enkai)
Project Related
The Claremont Tunnel – Designed to Survive Fault Rupture on the Hayward Fault
The Claremont tunnel beneath the Berkeley Hills on the east side of Oakland is a water supply tunnel that serves over 800,000 customers in Richmond, Oakland, San Leandro and neighboring communities. One of the unique things about the tunnel is that it crosses the active Hayward Fault. Most of the time when you talk about designing for earthquakes you’re talking about designing to withstand the seismic forces. In this case, the designers needed the water transmission tunnel to withstand up to 7.5-ft of offset due to fault slip and still maintain a minimum level of service. (Photo credit: Sue Bednarz, Jacobs Associates, Inc. by way of Civil Engineering Magazine)
This post describes the relatively recent Claremont Tunnel Seismic Upgrade Project as reported in Civil Engineering Magazine (May 2008, v. 78, no. 5, pp 58-63, 96-97).
Geologic Hazards
Regulators aware for years of understated seismic risks to nuclear plants
With the events in Japan on everyone’s mind, it’s of course to be expected that seismic safety at nuclear power plants in the U.S. becomes a hot topic. This article discusses how the Nuclear Regulatory […]