Firing Over A-Plant Quake Warning Is Probed

The Energy Department is investigating a report that a structural engineer was fired after concluding that an earthquake could cause the walls to collapse at the department’s Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, a department official confirmed Saturday.

The engineer, Paul Nestel, says other engineers rewrote his study to say the walls of the Oak Ridge plant were sturdy enough.

The revised report was based on “spurious calculations that would be obvious to any engineer with earthquake experience,” Nestel told the Washington Post. He called the nuclear plant, built near the end of World War II, an example of “Third World construction.”

Nestel was recruited in July by Lockwood Greene Inc. of Oak Ridge to conduct the earthquake study for Martin Marietta Energy Systems Inc., which operates the Oak Ridge plant for the Energy Department, the Post said.

Steve Wyatt, a spokesman for the Energy Department facilities, said a two-person internal panel has been appointed to review the case. The review should take about a week, he said.

Nestel reported Sept. 25 that the unreinforced clay tile walls of the main building of the Y-12 plant would give way if struck by an earthquake with a lateral force of 0.12% of gravity, well below the 0.19% used as the “design basis” for quake vulnerability studies.

San Francisco’s Marina district was heavily damaged in the October earthquake by a force of 0.15%, Nestel said. He said the New Madrid fault “altered the course of the Mississippi River” when it last slipped early in the 19th Century. The earthquake created Reelfoot Lake in western Tennessee.

“If it slipped again, it would certainly destroy those walls,” he said.

Although Oak Ridge is in east Tennessee and the fault is several hundred miles west, the shock of Eastern earthquakes is spread over a wider area.