Why Diablo Canyon is unsafe

05.17.11 - 10:32 am | Tim Redmond |

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Bad industrial accidents have a common thread: They happen when more than one thing goes wrong. At the Fukushima nuclear plant, an earthquake damaged the reactors and a tsunami knocked out the backup generators. At Three Mile Island, a series of small mistakes cascaded into a much larger disaster.

And now a new report shows that PG&E's Diablo Canyon plant has the same problem: Lots of smaller things are messed up, and they could lead to problems in, say, the inevitable earthquake. A fence could block a fire hose from reaching a burning or overheated reactor. The building that houses fire equipment could collapse. And, according to the Bay Citizen:

The plant’s back-up generators might not be usable during a disaster, because PG&E had not considered how to turn them on under adverse conditions. The generators are all stored in the same spot, which could make them “susceptible to a common made failure because of the similarities in design and location."

These, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission insists, are just minor problems that can be easily fixed. Maybe so, now that they've been identified. But there will be other "minor" problems that haven't shown up yet (just as the minor problem of blueprints being read backward didn't show up until the last minute in the plant's construction), because PG&E has never been serious about plant safety. (If the company was serious, the plant would never have been built on an active earthquake fault.)

That's the problem with this plant (and with nukes in general). The outcome of an accident is so potentially catastrophic that normal safety measures won't do. Even extraordinary safety measures won't do. And Diablo is in a bad place where a predictable event -- a strong quake on the Hosgri Fault -- could trigger a series of unpredictable events (the fire trucks can't get out of the shed, the backup generators won't start, etc.) that could lead to an unimaginable disaster.

Time to shut this thing down.

Comments

Anti-nuke, are we?

Just call a spade a spade. Don't disguise your anti-nuke sentiments as an informative revelation that will provide insight, depth, or education. Change the title to "I Hate Nukes."

Diablo Canyon has operated safely and holds some world records for performance. Read the report from www.nrc.gov and learn what it REALLY said.

It's disappointing to me that the fantastic power of the press is purely wasted on personal agendas, over exaggerated claims, and carnival antics. Is this all really the best we can be?

Posted by Guest on May. 17, 2011 @ 6:13 pm

I find it unfathomable that a

I find it unfathomable that a nuclear power plant would ever be built so near active faults in the first place. I guess so goes the overconfidence of man. And the statements that I read from the plant's operators concerning the 'full proof' safety systems are just a construct of the overconfidence. Here we go again... Noteben one iota of action will be taken, but we will yet again all shake our heads in amazement if something goes wrong.

Posted by Guest on May. 17, 2011 @ 9:03 pm

The US will never control C02 emissions without nuclear

It's not possible no matter how many times Tim and other say it is. Nuclear will have to be a part, a large part, of any energy plan which results in large reductions of C02. And yes, the government is going to have to subsidize nuclear in the exact same way the government is guaranteeing loans for large solar plants under the Obama administration.

Posted by Lucretia Snapples on May. 17, 2011 @ 10:02 pm

Nuclear Causes Massive Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Nuclear Causes Massive Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Let's talk greenhouse gas -reality- around nuclear power.

First, nuclear creates massive greenhouse gas emissions. This is because the refining of uranium ore requires the burning of large amounts of fossil fuel. Consequently, in its lifetime, a nuclear power plant produces fully one third to one half of the GHGs as does a similar capacity natural gas power plant.

And this gets worse. Uranium is depleting and reaching its peak just as is oil. As a result, every year, uranium ore becomes less pure and requires still higher levels of processing via fossil fuel. Because of this dynamic, if we were to engage a planet wide ramp up of nuclear to replace coal and gas, within just 10 years, the average nuke plant would produce exactly the same amount of GHGs as a similar output natural gas power plant.

Add to this the fact that in the next half century we need to not only halt GHG emissions, but actually reverse them. We must start pulling down huge amounts of CO2 -from- the air through advanced permaculture forestry and agriculture until we fall from 392ppm to 350ppm CO2 in the atmosphere. So any energy source which produces -any- significant amount of GHGs (as nuclear does) is a huge hindrance to that task.

Finally, the gigantic cost factor of building nuke plants (especially after this latest accident) is so high, that rolling out sufficient nuke plant capacity quickly enough to address our global energy supply problems in any meaningful way, simply cannot physically be done in the time we have to turn things around on this planet. A massive change in energy use is required in the next ten years. Large scale nukes cannot even be remotely available at scale at all, until -after- ten years at best.

The bottom line here is that -regardless- of safety, nuclear will simply not work to solve the global energy and climate crisis - period. Nuclear is already dead. And Japan is the last nail in its coffin.

And there are indeed alternatives to nuclear.

An entire book has been written on them titled "Carbon Free and Nuclear Free".

It is available at no charge online at: http://www.ieer.org/carbonfree/

Posted by Eric Brooks on May. 20, 2011 @ 12:38 pm

Industry: Our nuc, oil, farmming, textile, and anything else.

They all have their problems in order to deal with it safely.
Have problems examples;

Farming you have bad chemicals released in the water supply, nucs the danger of explosion, Oil spills in to the oceans and sea, textiles cancer causing chemicals to human health and animals.

So on it goes, I believe your focus should be on the people handling those things not on nucs, farmming, textiles and other industries.

People are careless and take short cuts and in a rush and sometimes just to make money.

Create an intrastructures that makes strict rule to follow and enforce accountability.

Those industries are here! Make them safer for you and me and for future people and teach our children to really care.

Posted by Guest Richard on May. 20, 2011 @ 9:08 am

Diablo Canyon Article

Will the author of this brilliant article explain to his readers where the 2200 Megawatts of power will come from if DC is taken off line. Please don't say wind or solar because that is a laughable non solution. Coal?

So lets here it, how do you replace all that electricity?

Posted by Guest In the know on Jul. 15, 2011 @ 12:02 pm