Pakistan: Damage to Pakistani Nuclear Facilities because of Quake

Hours after the earthquake in Pakistan, the QuakeHelp team received many emails (such as this one) from readers voicing their concern about the safety of Pakistan's Kahuta Nuclear Facility which was located just 100km away from the quake's epicentre. The following report has been double-checked by various sources and it has been confirmed that there has been damage to the Nuclear Facilities in affected areas (Kahuta is located much closer to the epicentre that the areas mentioned below):

There is fifteen to twenty per cent damage to Pakistani nuclear facilities and storage sites in the Northern Areas, especially in Skardu and Chitral, and the local population faces the risk of contamination, but a curfew has been imposed, and they are being actively prevented by the authorities from leaving the area. Because of the serious damage to the nuclear facilities in the Northern Areas, the Pakistan government has turned away international relief teams, prevented Indian Army relief work and Indian Air Force supply drops, and withdrawn the consent for Israeli assistance, fearing that Mossad agents would be infiltrated who would destroy the atomic establishments.

While Western sources did not say that reactors had been damaged in the 8 October earthquake, they confirmed that missile silos had developed cracks, and storage facilities had taken a hit, and since the epicentre is likely to be seismically active for another two years, they expressed fear of further collapse of the nuclear establishments. To prevent leak of this massive nuclear destruction, Pakistan both bottled up the local population by imposing curfew, and did not permit international inspection of the disaster-hit areas.

Source: NewsInsight via the South Asia QuakeHelp Blog

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