ABSTRACT
Worldwide, substantial proportion of the engineering effort that goes into nuclear power station design is developed against environmental hazards. Japan's first nuclear power station, a Magnox plant built by the General Electric Company of the UK incurred an increase of civil engineering costs of between 30 and 40 per cent because of additional anti-earthquake design features. With the passage of time power utilities have experienced decreasing freedom in their choice of sites for nuclear power stations. Engineered safeguards in the design and construction of plant buildings can cope with tornadoes and floods, but earthquakes, it is argued, are a different matter. In tectonically unstable areas it is impracticable to provide a structure totally capable of resisting large-scale ground failure. In a tectonically very unstable environment the Japanese authorities have recognized the need to find nuclear power station sites that are geologically as stable as possible, and they have also taken both earthquakes and tsunamis into account in engineering design criteria.
