coverage of the disaster in japan right here on msnbc sunday. the motorola xoom tablet. with the velocity of a 1-ghz dual core processor, 3-d graphics engine, gyroscope, and a widescreen hd display. grab it and it grabs you. only at verizon.
terms of the seismic activity in terms of the area where they re built. so those in california are built at higher standards than elsewhere in the country. the disturbing thing about what s happening in japan, though, is that the events, the earthquake and the tsunami, have definitely exceeded the parameters for which the plants were designed, and that can happen anywhere because of the fact that the seismic standards differ in different parts of the country. well, peter, somewhat disturbing, as i contemplate all this i spoke with an expert yesterday, an engineer, who basically said, look, you go past a certain point, 8.9, 9 on a magnitude of an earthquake, and sometimes you cannot build something that will withstand the force of mother nature like that. i mean, in your mind, are these places in california that have these nuclear power plants, are they absolutely safe or is there cause for concern if a big one comes there?
thank you very much for weighing in and we ll check in with you again. thank you. sure, thank you. we are getting some incredible before and after images from japan. check out notori. this is a photo taken a year ago and then if you look at the picture taken yesterday, farmland is under water. the neighborhood you re looking at appears to be completely wiped out in the former picture. now, the new york times posted these satellite images, which were taken by geo eye. hey, did you ever finish last month s invoices? sadly, no.
federal agencies to evaluate the threat that we have in terms of earthquakes. and it s been doing, i think, a very good job through its lead agency, the national institute of standards and technology. thomas, are there places within the united states, be it with the continental 48 or alaska, i wouldn t think so much hawaii, although i m actually not going to say that, any of the 50 states where we could see a 9.0 earthquake, is that possible based on the fault lines that we have running under our area of the world? well, you know, alex, one of our great threats in this country, especially with respect to tsunami, is the northwestern part of the united states. so, if you look at oregon, northern california and washington, they sit astride what s called the cascadeou ss zone. so it s a mechanism for fault rupture that we see in japan just off the coast of oregon and