I wonder what would the effect of a nuclear plant blowing right on top of the sesmic activity be? I caught a blurb that this quake has shifted the axis, similar to Indonesia quake; did not catch the shift degree (Indonesia was 1/4 degree?)
Two major quakes effecting the Earths axis, this can not be good.
Probably negligible. An 8.8 earthquake releases a rough equivalent energy as 20 billion tons of TNT (400 times the size of the Tsar Bomba)
Even a complete catastrophic failure of a nuclear plant wouldn’t result in the kind of explosion seen in a nuclear bomb, so you probably wouldn’t see anything much.
linky: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/02/27/magnitude-8-8-earthquake-off-chile-coast/