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Boxer: Regulators 'heads should roll over Diablo nuclear plant
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: April 20th, 2015
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Boxer-Regulators-head...
Weeks before Pacific Gas and Electric Co. released a long-awaited seismic report about the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant last year, Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials had already drafted talking points declaring the plant safe from earthquakes, Sen. Barbara Boxer said Wednesday. An internal commission memo showed that the agency was planning to tell the public that the NRC had reviewed the report, and it had concluded Diablo Canyon was seismically safe before even seeing the report. Boxer ... used it to illustrate what she called the commissions lax attitude toward seismic safety, even in the wake of the 2011 meltdown of three reactors at Japans Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Her comments shone new light on a controversy that has simmered since the seismic safety reports release last fall. PG&E released the report on Sept. 10. That same day, the commission the federal agency that regulates nuclear plants formally rejected complaints from one of its own former inspectors at Diablo Canyon, who had argued that the plant should be closed. Several newly discovered faults nearby, he said, could produce more violent shaking than Diablo was designed to withstand. Environmental groups ... accused the commission and PG&E of colluding to release both the report and the rejection of the inspectors complaint on the same day, generating positive press about Diablos safety.
Note: Why would Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials ignore their responsibility to protect the public from the potentially disastrous combination of earthquakes and nuclear power plants?
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