A Natural Resources Defense Council simulation of a severe accident at Diablo Canyon shows a southbound radioactive plume extending from Avila to Santa Barbara, illustrating that evacuation via Highway 101 south isn’t realistic.
In 2013, a U.S. Government Accountability Office Congressional report raised concerns that unauthorized “shadow” evacuations would impede those under evacuation orders. Many told to “shelter-in-place” would resist complying, unaware that the rate of air exchange in a closed, moving car greatly exceeds that in a closed house, increasing the risk of inhaling radioactive particles.
An official at our county’s Office of Emergency Services conceded that evacuations planned for our highways aren’t workable. Nonetheless, “sheltering-in-place” training isn’t being offered to help residents lower risks during acute emergencies, such as a release of toxic chemicals from derailed tankers or a radioactive cloud from Diablo Canyon.
My public statements in 2016 to the SLO City Council and County Board of Supervisors and the Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee have been met with chilly silence. Resistance to more realistic emergency planning subjects county residents to even greater hazards now that Diablo Canyon is preparing to shut down—a risky stage, as other U.S. nuclear plants being decommissioned have saved funds by deferring replacement of failing components.
Milt Carrigan
San Luis Obispo
This article appears in Sep 7-17, 2017.
Even shelter in place won’t work. And we won’t know where the plumes are as the winds change.
Another major risk are the thin-wall steel dry storage canisters. A two-year old Diablo Canyon canister has all the conditions for cracking. Each canister contains about as much highly radioactive Cesium-137 as was released from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
PG&E has no technology to inspect for cracks in these Chernobyl cans, and no way to repair, maintain or monitor to PREVENT leaks. What’s even worse,
they have no safe plan in place to deal with leaking canisters. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission states once a crack starts it will grow through the wall in about 16 years.
All the waste that’s ever been generated is sitting at Diablo Canyon.
The waste has already been mismanaged. Over half the fuel waste was loaded incorrectly in the canisters. This can cause the fuel and fuel rods (referred to as cladding) to become damaged. With the high burnup fuel used at Diablo, hydrogen and other explosive gases can build up in the canisters. Mixed with oxygen there is a potential for explosions. How many Chernobly cans can we afford to have leak and potentially explode?
Residents need to advocate for thick-wall casks that don’t have the problems of the thin-wall canisters. This is the standard in most of the world. Diablo cans are 1/2″ thick. European ones are 10″ to 19 3/4″ thick). This is just common sense. SanOnofreSafety.org
Shelter in place strategies and evacuation strategies for nuclear accidents are a lie:
1. The likely event that triggers a spent fuel accident will be a large earthquake that compromises building envelopes by breaking windows, separating walls from roofs, and separating older buildings from foundations.
2. Sheltered people must eventually leave their shelters back into their radioactively contaminated communities that remain uninhabitable for generations. You can not escape a severe accident without exposure.
3. Radioactive plumes travel at the speed of the wind which can be hundreds of miles in a 24 hour period if prevailing winds are 8 miles per hour or greater.
4. Transportation systems, traffic lights, electric grids, and communications systems are knocked out by large quakes, making evacuations nearly impossible during quake triggered nuclear accidents.
5. We experienced gridlock on Sept.8, 2011 across San Diego County when San Onofre’s reactors were suddenly scrammed. Power and traffic signals went down and it was impossible to travel 1 mile across Solana Beach in 1 hour.
6. Shelter in place is the first pathetic step of what turns out to be a mass, permanent exodus from areas surrounding severe nuclear disasters. There is no happy ending, return to normal, and no “all clear to return home” siren after a nuclear disaster.
7. Nuclear disasters can = personal financial ruin AND life threatening radioactive fuel particle exposure within minutes of a plume release into the environment.
The former Prime Minister of Japan Naoto Kan spoke to the public at the San Diego County Administrative Center on June 4, 2013 and described how he almost lost Japan as a viable nation when the cooling systems in the spent fuel pools at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant were failing. He said he and his nuclear experts were putting in place contingency plans for the evacuation of Metropolitan Tokyo, the largest city in the world population 50 million, 160 miles away. It was only an aftershock that accidentally opened a jammed coolant valve that averted a nation ending disaster.
Think about that the next time County emergency planners working with PG&E try to confuse your survival instincts by conning you to believe they have a good emergency plan for a disaster at Diablo Canyon. They don’t have a viable plan to protect you and your community and never did.