Antinuclear

Oklahoma has always had earthquakes, but they used to be rather rare – about one or two a year that people could feel. That started to change around 2009. And by 2014, things really went crazy.

The seismological community is pretty unified in concluding that the big increase in earthquakes in Oklahoma comes from injecting wastewater brought up by oil and gas exploration back into the earth. Read more about the link between wastewater disposal wells and earthquakes here.

Oklahoma has about 3,200 wastewater disposal wells. The vast majority aren’t likely to cause problems with earthquakes. The problems start when wells are used to dispose of wastewater near pre-existing fault lines……..

The U.S. Geological Survey has identified areas in eight states as having measurable levels of induced seismicity. (Translation: man-made earthquakes.) Those include parts of Texas, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arkansas, Alabama, Ohio and, of course, Oklahoma.

And there are plenty of wastewater disposal wells in another state known for earthquakes, California.

But even though most induced-seismicity earthquakes are blamed on wastewater disposal, there are other ways we can trigger earthquakes……..

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has been linked to earthquakes, too. But so far, those quakes have been smaller and much shallower, making them less dangerous than disposal-induced quakes.

Large-scale geothermal power plants also can be a trigger for earthquakes, notably at The Geysers in the California wine country.

And underground nuclear tests produce measurable seismic waves. In fact, much of what we know about the size and success (or failure) of North Korea’s nuclear tests comes from seismologists’ analysis of the small earthquakes the blasts triggered…..https://www.revealnews.org/article/man-made-earthquakes-fact-or-fiction/