NRC likely to review Diablo Canyon engineering documents

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• Viewpoint: Heed the nuclear wake-up call

  Viewpoint: Heed the nuclear wake-up call

  This year, a tragic mix of earthquakes and nuclear power at Fukushima rocked us with a global wake-up call. How has the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission responded? By hitting the snooze button.

  Even as we write, they continue to shuffle their feet at a zombielike pace while debating implementation of the most timid reforms. For residents of seismically situated San Luis Obispo, this comes as no surprise. The NRC’s sleep-inducing obfuscation began just one year ago today, at their SLO “seismic workshop.”

  A year before the Fuku-shima tragedy, the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility met with the chairman of the NRC. We requested that the NRC work in partnership with California agencies on the state’s recommended seismic studies, so that we, “the public,” could feel confident that the results were vetted with the oversight of our state.

• Mothers for Peace challenges NRC review

  Mothers for Peace challenges NRC review

  San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace has joined 25 other groups in petitioning the federal government to stop license renewal of nuclear plants until regulators address a range of health and safety concerns brought to light by the March 11 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.

  Mothers for Peace has filed several challenges with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission questioning the adequacy of the agency’s environmental review of the Diablo Canyon plant and asking the agency to implement the safety recommendations of an NRC task force that looked at lessons learned from the nuclear meltdown in Japan before license renewal of the plant can proceed.

  “The contention filed by the San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace attorney Diane Curran asserts that the NRC is obligated by federal law to adopt this and other recommendations of its task force in order to fulfill its function of providing adequate public safety,” said Jane Swanson, Mothers for Peace spokeswoman.

• Top 10 Stories of 2011: No. 5 — Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant reacts to Japan’s Fukushima disaster

  Top 10 Stories of 2011: No. 5 — Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant reacts to Japan’s Fukushima disaster

  The Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan left many residents of San Luis Obispo County wondering whether a similar accident would be possible at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, located along California’s earthquake-prone Central Coast. It also greatly intensified calls for PG&E to suspend plans to renew the plant’s two operating licenses until a thorough seismic investigation of the earthquake faults around the plant is completed.

• Viewpoint: Nuclear power continues to be safe and reliable

  Viewpoint: Nuclear power continues to be safe and reliable

  It’s been six months since Fukushima, and U.S. nuclear power plants — especially San Onofre and Diablo Canyon — continue to perform safely and reliably. Credit goes to the nuclear industry and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for taking a measured response to the Japanese accident and not shutting down U.S. plants, as some opponents of nuclear power had urged.

  The tsunami and earthquake that devastated northern Japan on March 11 caused thousands of deaths, but it was the cascade of failures at the Fukushima nuclear plant that captured the headlines. Never mind that there has not been a single radiation-related fatality from the accident, just as there were none from the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania. But in such an environment, there were those whose strident anti-nuclear rhetoric tried to drown out more judicious voices.

  Immediately after the Japanese accident, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), longtime opponent of nuclear power and a ranking Democrat on a House subcommittee that oversees the

• Nuclear regulatory agency shares spent fuel concerns

  Nuclear regulatory agency shares spent fuel concerns

  San Luis Obispo County is one of 65 communities in the nation that faces a daunting reality. For the foreseeable future — possibly hundreds of years — it will be a storage site for highly radioactive used fuel from a commercial nuclear power plant.

  On Thursday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission held an “early outreach” hearing in San Luis Obispo to discuss how the federal agency plans to safely and securely deal with that reality and also to get public feedback. It was one of only three such meetings this month the agency is holding nationwide.

  As is typical when the NRC holds a public meeting in San Luis Obispo, it got an earful. San Luis Obispo County Supervisor Adam Hill started it off by saying that concerns about waste storage at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is one issue that unites his pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear constituents.