Radiological disaster risk at PG&E's Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant

"Petition seeks closure of Diablo Canyon nuclear plant"
2014-08-27 by David R. Baker for "San Francisco Chronicle" daily newspaper [http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Petition-seeks-closure-of-Diablo-Canyon-nuclear-5714455.php]:
Diablo Canyon's reactors need to be able to shut down safely in the wake of an earthquake, the plant's license says. (Photo: Michael Mariant, Associated Press)

The environmental group that helped shut down the San Onofre nuclear plant last year is now using the same tactic in a bid to close California's last nuclear power plant, PG&E's Diablo Canyon.
The plant, near San Luis Obispo, risks catastrophic failure during an earthquake and should be shuttered pending a public review of its safety, according to a petition that Friends of the Earth filed with federal regulators Tuesday.
The group filed the petition with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, arguing that Diablo's design may not be strong enough to withstand earthquakes from fault lines that nearly surround the plant. As proof, the environmentalists cite a recently disclosed report from a former federal inspector at the plant who reached the same conclusion.
Earthquake fears have long shadowed the plant, which opened in 1985 after years of protests. Several fault lines were found only after work on the plant began, with the latest discovery coming in 2008.
Diablo's operating license requires that it be able to shut down safely following a major quake. But the petition argues that nearby faults are capable of much stronger shaking than Diablo's design anticipated, rendering the license invalid.
"PG&E cannot run this reactor without a valid license, and they don't have one," said Damon Moglen, senior strategic adviser for Friends of the Earth. "There is nobody in this country, PG&E included, who would want to build a reactor today at Diablo Canyon. It would never pass muster."
It mirrors the strategy the environmental group used to help force the closure of the San Onofre nuclear plant in San Diego County.
San Onofre's operator, Southern California Edison, shut down the plant in 2012 after a small leak of radioactive steam revealed equipment wearing out faster than anticipated. Friends of the Earth filed a petition insisting that Edison apply for a license amendment - a process that requires public hearings - before restarting the plant. The NRC's licensing board agreed. Three weeks later, Edison announced that it would decommission the plant instead.
Friends of Earth now wants PG&E to seek a license amendment to continue running Diablo.
"They now know that the ground motion of these faults is greater than is contained in their license," Moglen said. "I think the argument here is extremely straightforward."
The move follows the disclosure of a 2013 document written by a former NRC inspector stationed at the plant. The inspector, Michael Peck, recommended shutting down Diablo until the commission determined whether the plant's equipment could survive higher seismic stress levels.
"Continued reactor operation outside the bounds of the NRC approved safety analyses challenges the presumption of nuclear safety," Peck wrote.
Peck's opinion was revealed by the Associated Press on Monday, touching off a fresh round of criticism of the plant. Sen. Barbara Boxer, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, promised a public hearing into the matter.
"A year ago, a qualified NRC inspector informed the NRC that the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant should be shut down until it is clear that the plant can withstand the kind of earthquake that has been predicted for the area," said Boxer, D-Calif. "I am alarmed that the NRC has not followed this recommendation and has not required actions to protect the 500,000 people who live near the site."
PG&E insists that the plant can withstand earthquakes on any of the faults nearby. Following the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Japan, PG&E conducted more seismic tests near the plant, including embedding seismometers on the ocean floor. The company is now analyzing that data, said spokesman Blair Jones.
"The region surrounding Diablo Canyon is one of the most seismically researched places in the United States," Jones said.
The operating licenses for Diablo's twin reactors expire in 2024 and 2025, and until Fukushima, PG&E had been in the process of asking the NRC to renew the licenses. That process is now on hold until PG&E finishes its latest seismic study and submits the results to California regulators.
"Any decision on whether or how to proceed with license renewal will wait until after we complete the seismic report," Jones said.


"Diablo Canyon nuclear plant 'near miss' in report"
2011-03-18 by David R. Baker for the "San Francisco Chronicle" daily newspaper [http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Diablo-Canyon-nuclear-plant-near-miss-in-report-2389034.php]:
PG&E's Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in Avila Beach, Calif. on Friday, May 26, 2006. The two spent fuel storage pools are nearing its capacity of 2,648 cells so plant officials are constructing a dry cask storage area to hold future radioactive fuel cell waste.
(The Chronicle Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle)

For 18 months, operators at the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant near San Luis Obispo didn't realize that a system to pump water into one of their reactors during an emergency wasn't working.
It had been accidentally disabled by the plant's own engineers, according to a report issued Thursday on the safety of nuclear reactors in the United States.
The report, from the Union of Concerned Scientists watchdog group, lists 14 recent "near misses" - instances in which serious problems at a plant required federal regulators to respond.
The report criticizes both plant operators and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for allowing some known safety issues to fester.
"The severe accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986 occurred when a handful of known problems - aggravated by a few worker miscues - transformed fairly routine events into catastrophes," the report notes.

The problem -
The problem at Diablo Canyon, which is owned by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., involved a series of valves that allow water to pour into one of the plant's two reactors during emergencies, keeping the reactor from overheating.
The loss of water in a reactor can lead to at least a partial meltdown - a process believed to be under way at Japan's stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant after last week's earthquake and tsunami.
Engineers at Diablo Canyon inadvertently created the problem while trying to solve another issue, according to the report.
A pair of remotely operated valves in the emergency cooling system was taking too long to move from completely closed to completely open. So engineers shortened the distance between those two positions, according to the report.
Unfortunately, two other pairs of valves were interlocked with the first. They couldn't open at all until the first pair opened all the way. No one noticed until the valves refused to open during a test in October 2009, 18 months after the engineers made the changes.
"It was disabled, and they didn't know it," said Jane Swanson, spokeswoman for the Mothers for Peace anti-nuclear group, which frequently spars with federal regulators over Diablo Canyon. "That's unforgivable, and it's not that unusual."
In an emergency, Diablo Canyon operators still could have opened the valves manually.
They could also have used a separate system of pumps to inject water into the reactor, PG&E spokesman Kory Raftery said.
"We want to make sure we put safety first - that's why we have redundant systems," he said.
He added, "The potential is very small for the type of situation where we'd need this system in the first place."
PG&E has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to extend the licenses of Diablo Canyon's twin reactors past their original expiration dates of 2024 and 2025. Mothers for Peace has opposed that move.
The valve problem and the union's report, Swanson said, illustrate how even minor technical issues at a plant have the potential to cause serious problems.

'Domino effect' -
"Any given nuclear power plant is such a complex system," she said. "As we've seen in Japan, the domino effect can happen."
With the Japanese crisis riveting world attention, Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein called on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday to perform thorough safety inspections at Diablo Canyon as well as California's other commercial nuclear plant, San Onofre, in San Diego County.
But the commission's chairman said Thursday there was no immediate need to inspect any U.S. nuclear plants.
Later Thursday, President Obama said the United States faces no danger of radioactive contamination from Japan's nuclear plant and has ordered a comprehensive review of safety at U.S. plants.

"Call for independent investigation of WIPP accident"

2014-04 from Nuclear Information and Resource Center [http://www.nirs.org], posted at [http://org2.salsalabs.com/o/5502/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=17253]:
Two months ago, something happened at the Department of Energy's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico--something that resulted in a radiation release from deep under the earth that found its way outside the site, including the release of plutonium.
What that something was, however, remains unknown. Even though Department of Energy investigators have managed to enter WIPP in recent days (although not to the actual area where the release is believed to have occurred), there has been essentially zero publicly-released information on what happened or whether it could happen again, or conceivably whether something worse could happen.
The Department of Energy (DOE) is in charge of investigating what happened at WIPP. And it makes sense for them to conduct such an investigation--after all, it is responsible for the site.
But the DOE's track record--and trustworthiness--on radioactive waste issues is, at best, dismal. Even a fully transparent DOE investigation, and so far it has been far from transparent, would be suspect. Indeed, there remain far more unanswered questions than answered ones.
An independent investigation into what happened and what actions need to be taken to prevent a recurrence, or something worse, is needed. But that won't happen on its own; DOE is certainly not going to call for one.
So we're asking you to contact your Congressmembers and insist that an independent investigation to examine the WIPP travesty be formed.

Nuclear safety disregarded by private URS firm of San Francisco

"Whistleblower Fired After Voicing Safety Concerns at Nuclear Site;
Donna Busche, who repeatedly cited dangerous conditions, is not first forced from job at leak-prone nuclear waste dump"
2014-02-19 by Sarah Lazare for "CommonDreams.org" [http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/02/19/whistleblower-fired-after-voicing-safety-concerns-nuclear-site]:
The person responsible for overseeing the cleanup of the former nuclear weapons site in Hanford, Washington—the most contaminated in the United States—was fired on Tuesday after blowing the whistle on the dangerous conditions at the facility.
Donna Busche—manager of Environmental and Nuclear Safety for the San Francisco-based URS Corporation, a Hanford cleanup subcontractor hired by the federal government — is at least the third senior official who has been fired or forced out after raising the alarm about lack of safety at the site, according to the Los Angeles Times [http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-hanford-whistleblower-fired-20140218,0,7410182.story]. She said executives told her she was being fired for “unprofessional conduct.”
“The Energy Department’s overall safety culture is broken and all they are doing now is sitting idly by,” Busche declared on Tuesday.
While URS claims Busche was not punished or retaliated against, Busche says she was "absolutely" targeted [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/second-whistleblower-donna-busche-fired-at-troubled-wash-state-hanford-nuke-plant/].
Busche, who had repeatedly charged that the clean-up company was steamrolling safety protections and ignoring dangerous technology flaws, had previously filed a lawsuit and a U.S. Labor Department complaint charging that URS was attempting to repress and fire her for speaking out.
"When people stand up and say something is unsafe and, as a result of that, they get fired, it sends a message to everyone else that to protect your career you should say nothing," said Tom Carpenter, Executive Director for the watchdog organization Hanford Challenge, in an interview with Common Dreams.
He added, "I feel extremely disappointment that the federal government, who hires these contractors, has failed to hold this company to account."
The Hanford facility, which was built by the federal government during the 1940s, has long been central to the U.S. military's nuclear arsenal, including the development of the atom bomb, production of plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, and other nuclear weapons.
The massive facility, which is now mostly decommissioned, is home to more than 53 million gallons of extremely radioactive sludge held in troubled tanks that have previously leaked [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/6-tanks-at-hanford-nuclear-site-in-wash-leaking/]. An estimated 1 million gallons of radioactive fluid has already spilled at the site, threatening the nearby Columbia River.
The Energy Department is engaged in a multi-billion dollar effort to transform this radioactive waste into a glass-like substance for permanent underground storage. Yet several high-ranking scientists and officials at the site have warned the technology is unsound and the process reckless.
Although they were also fired, the previous warnings by whistleblowers prompted work stoppages and a federal investigation into dangers at the site—including the possibility of a hydrogen explosion.

Military nuclear waste dump is leaking into underground water sources

"Suspected Radiation Leak in Military's Nuclear Dumping Ground;
'This is highly toxic poisoning that can be eliminated by stopping the desire to be a nuclear power over the world' "
2014-02-17 by Sarah Lazare for "CommonDreams.org" [http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/02/17/suspected-radiation-leak-militarys-nuclear-dumping-ground]:
A New Mexico deep-earth repository for the U.S. military's nuclear waste has likely sprung an underground radiation leak, sparking concern among Native American communities and other residents who "carry the burden" of this state's nuclear legacy.
"Since the detonation and creation of first atomic bomb in New Mexico, we the people who live in close proximity of storage and creation of these weapons have been in a state of fear," said Kathy Wanpovi Sanchez, Environmental Health and Justice Program Manager for Tewa Women United, an indigenous organization based in northen New Mexico.
Over the weekend, abnormally high levels of radioactive particles were found underground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad in southeastern New Mexico, where radioactive waste, including from nuclear weapons production, is dumped deep beneath the earth's surface and stored in salt formations.
"I believe it's safe to say we've never seen a level like we are seeing. We just don't know if it's a real event, but it looks like one," said Department of Energy spokesman Roger Nelson.
WIPP stores waste that releases alpha and beta radiation, which are highly cancerous when ingested, explained Arnie Gundersen, former nuclear industry executive turned whistleblower, in an interview with Common Dreams. DOE officials say radiation has not been detected in surface samples, and no workers have been exposed. They say they do not yet know the source of the suspected underground leak.
Gundersen says the technology behind WIPP is untested — hence the word "pilot" in the facility's title. "As a society, we believe that if you stick things in the earth, they are safe," he said. "But with radioactivity, it's not dead. It can come back to haunt you if there is a leak afterwards. This is alive."
Don Hancock, Director of the Nuclear Waste Program at the Southwest Research and Information Center, says the concerns about the site extend beyond the method of nuclear waste storage. "We have always thought the site is a bad site primarily because it is centrally located in one of the largest and most active oil and gas production areas in the United States. This does not seem to be an appropriate place to put waste."
The incident comes just over a week after an underground truck fire forced an evacuation of the facility.
Nuclear experts are not convinced that the situation is safe. "This kind of incident is not supposed to happen," said Hancock. "Just like the fire on the underground, there were these two incidents within a 12-day period. That is worrisome and that is a significant situation."
Storage is not the only issue facing local residents. Nuclear waste transported from across the country, and across the state from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the north, where nuclear weapons are developed, passes through "Native American reservations, major highways, and near school systems," as it makes its way to WIPP, says Sanchez.
"Our pain and death due to cancer have been ignored. We are sick and tired of all this madness. And all this transportation and waste storage is for the benefit of a nuclear war weapons arsenal. Why?" asked Sanchez. "The U.S. government disregards and takes advantage of indigenous people. This is an unequal share of the burden we are carrying."
She added, "This is highly toxic poisoning that can be eliminated by stopping the desire to be a nuclear power over the world."