‘Secret’ Decision to Hide Nuclear Plant Quake Risk Challenged

WASHINGTON, DC, – Friends of the Earth has petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals to overturn a “secret decision” by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the group claims “illegally” changes the operating license for the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant on the coast of Southern California.

The group claims this decision allows the plant’s operator Pacific Gas and Electric, PG&E, to hide the fact that the reactors are vulnerable to earthquakes stronger than they were meant to withstand.

In a July 2013 formal dissent, which the NRC did not release for more than a year, Dr. Peck argued that newly discovered faults could produce earthquakes far more destructive than the plant was designed, built and licensed to withstand.Diablo Canyon is California’s only remaining operational nuclear plant after the closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in 2013. It was built less than a mile from the Shoreline fault line, and is located less than three miles from a second fault.The secret revision of Diablo Canyon’s license was revealed in NRC documents rejecting a dissent by the plant’s former senior resident inspector. The inspector, Dr. Michael Peck, defied his superiors by warning that Diablo Canyon was operating in violation of its license and should be shut down unless and until new seismic information was addressed.

Last month, in rejecting the dissent, the NRC revealed that in September 2013 it had changed the way the risk of earthquakes at the plant are assessed, without requiring any safety upgrades by PG&E.

“The amendment was added in secret, unknown beyond the highest levels of PG&E and the NRC,” claims Friends of the Earth.

On Tuesday, Friends of the Earth petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to review the amendment, overturn it and order a public license amendment proceeding as required by federal law.

“PG&E’s new seismic study reveals that the earthquake threat at Diablo – if measured by its original license – could be far greater than that for which the reactors were designed. So PG&E and the NRC secretly amended the license to relax the safety requirements,” said David Freeman, former head of the Tennessee Valley Authority, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. “This is not only illegal, it’s an outrage.”

Friends of the Earth cites a PG&E report released in September showing that a newly discovered fault, located just 650 yards from the plant, is twice as long as the utility had maintained since 2011.

The report also acknowledged Peck’s concern that the new fault is connected to two others and together the three are capable of producing much stronger shaking than the plant was designed and licensed to withstand.

In the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, a 2011 NRC study indicated that Diablo Canyon is the nuclear power plant in the U.S. most likely to fail in response to an earthquake larger than it was designed to withstand.