you ve had magnitude 8, 8.5 earthquakes, one occurred within 36 hours of each other, another case two years. turning to california and the west coast, the cascadia zone that mr. winchester described actually last ruptured in 1700 a.d. on january 26th 9:30 p.m. we know that because of the tsunami that was recorded in japan as well as geologic work done by brian atwater and colleagues at the university of washington. in california, our group open hazards has actually looked at probabilities of major earthquakes for the four cities, san francisco, sacramento, san diego, l.a., and basically we find that the probability of a magnitude 7 earthquake within 150 miles of those cities within the next year sore is typically about 10%. so we would expect actually a magnitude 7 earthquake probably sometime in the next five to ten years. i want to go ahead and show everybody, pull up an earthquake hazard map from the usgs.
japan. we have to be very careful that we do not allow boosterism to lead to complacency and disaster here in the united states. this is a warning to us. we have to be very, very careful. we should have a moratorium on new nuclear power plants being built on seismic faults as they are in california. we have to build in greater safety protection. we have to distribute potassium iodide around nuclear power plants so we don t wind up with the panic we are seeing in japan now. i want to show everyone. we have an earthquake hazard map from the u.s. geological survey. do you believe our nuclear facilities are properly prepared to handle a major earthquake? i know you said you would like to see all of them under review. yes. they should go under review. this is a warning to us. we now have an opportunity to put in place protections that are going to be needed in order