One of the Worst Earthquakes in Korea’s History Was Caused by Humans
Puerto Rico Power Fully Restored 18 Months After Hurricane Maria Wiped Out the Grid
Eighteen months after Hurricane Maria destroyed Puerto Rico’s electrical grid, customers on an island off the coast of the U.S. territory finally had their power restored Wednesday.
The Electric Power Authority said it connected an underwater cable to Culebra despite wariness from the more than 1,000 people who live on the island, which is popular with tourists. “One year and six months relying solely on a generator that if the gasoline runs out, we don’t have power,” said Culebra resident Grace Monel, adding that people were hit with several outages a month that have damaged home appliances. “It has taken so long.”
She said she worries the electrical grid is still fragile, noting that two major outages were reported on the main island of Puerto Rico this week alone. Officials said a cat was responsible for the first outage, which left thousands of people without power in the capital of San Juan on Saturday. Another outage, on Tuesday, was blamed on an iguana that made contact with a 115,000-volt bar, leaving some 100,000 people without power…
One of the Worst Earthquakes in Korea’s History Was Caused by Humans
View of the pregolskaya thermal power plant. Photo credit: Vitaly Nevar Getty Images
In 2017, South Korea suffered the second-worst earthquake in its history, and a recent investigations finds that it may have been caused by humans. According to the government-funded study, the cause of the quake was an experimental geothermal plant in the city of Pohang.
Geothermal plants rely on the Earth’s internal heat to generate clean, cheap energy, which makes them attractive as a way to combat climate change. The geothermal plant in Pohang was one of a handful of experimental plants located around the world that seek to make this type of generation more efficient.
The Pohang plant works by pumping thousands of gallons of water deep beneath the Earth’s surface and into small subsurface cracks. That water is warmed by the Earth’s crust and brought back up to the surface, where the excess heat is converted into electricity…
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