Dive Brief:
- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has decided not to shut down the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant until it can determine whether it can withstand earthquakes, according to Mark Satorius, executive director of operations at the NRC.
- Late last month, the Associated Press reported a confidential filing with the NRC from former Diablo Canyon lead inspector Michael Peck recommended the plant be shut down until it could be proven its nuclear reactors could withstand powerful earthquakes.
- Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), the owner and operator of the plant, released the results of a four-year study on Wednesday that concluded Diablo Canyon can withstand seismic forces from any of the five faults near the plant.
Dive Insight:
Diablo Canyon is California’s last remaining nuclear plant after the San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station was shut down after being found unsafe last year.
Michael Peck argued in his filing with the NRC that the plant should be shut down because its construction never took the recently discovered Shoreline fault into account. There is no reason to believe there is an urgent or serious safety issue at the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, according to the NRC.
The findings of PG&E's study agree with the NRC. The study will now be peer-reviewed by two separate scientific panels set up by the NRC and the California Public Utilities Commission, which is to be completed by 2015. The study mapped the five faults — Hosgri, Shoreline, Los Osos, San Simeon and San Luis Bay — around Diablo Canyon, giving new estimates on the upper limit of shaking and ground acceleration an earthquake could produce at the plant.
"The conclusions are that Diablo Canyon is seismically safe," said Ed Halpin, chief nuclear officer at PG&E.
