Montreal Gazette - Gentilly-2 reactor sits on fault line; Questions about Hydro's decision to spend $2 million to refurbish Trois Rivières plant

Japan's struggle to keep a major nuclear plant from collapsing into complete meltdown raises questions about Hydro-Québec's decision to spend $2 billion to refurbish its Gentilly-2 reactor in Trois Rivières, which stands on an earthquake fault line. Hydro-Québec has always insisted its lone nuclear reactor, which began operating in 1983, is safe and the $2-billion expenditure will keep it operating until 2040 with 800 employees on the job. But Meredith Nettles, a seismologist at Columbia University's earth observatory research centre, said in an interview "one would prefer not to build any critical facility, particularly a nuclear plant, in the path of an earthquake."

Of Canada's five nuclear plants - one in New Brunswick, one in Quebec, and three in Ontario - only Quebec's sits on a fault line. This fault line travels along the southern approach to the Laurentian mountains down the St. Lawrence Valley. The historical record indicates the fault has produced major quakes as large as 6.5 on the Richter scale. Many small earthquakes have occurred in the last 50 years. The Laurentian fault is similar to the fault line that travels down the Adirondacks, which also has produced major quakes. Because the Laurentian and Adirondack faults are located in the middle of a tectonic plate, they are difficult to predict, according to Andrew Hynes, an expert in tectonic plates at McGill University.