The earthquake in Japan on 11 March was so powerful that Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology has calculated that the planet Earth itself moved by 9.8in (25cm). The US Geological Survey said the main island of Japan had moved 7.8ft (2.4m). Following the earthquake, the waves of the tsunami reached as high as 33ft (10m) and travelled over 6m inland (10km).
There are Nuclear power plants in other countries that suffer from earthquakes but they are designed to withstand the impact of all but the most severe of geological disturbances. The Japanese authorities had been warned by the Nuclear Regulatory Inspectors that their Plants were not up to scratch would almost certainly suffer a major breach if there was such a problem.
They ignored the warnings.
there theoretically designed to withstand an earthquake. but you can never fully account for things like sympathetic vibrations, what may be safe for 1 frequency may well show weakness at another...
so the chances of any building being completely safe from every eventuality is about 80 percent...
not really high enough to warrant building such potentially hazardous powerstation on unstable land, but they do.
