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Global climate change and the nuclear weapons industry were listed as the primary threats, but the Bulletin’s analysis also cited “the leadership failure on nuclear power.” The Bulletin noted that “the international community has not developed coordinated plans to meet the challenges that nuclear power faces in terms of cost, safety, radioactive waste management, and proliferation risk.” The triple meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant in 2011 brought the issue to global attention after an unpredictable earthquake stronger than the plant was built to withstand overwhelmed the reactors in conjunction with a massive tsunami. This unprecedented disaster even led the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to establish a Fukushima Lessons Learned Division. But the situation at California’s last remaining active nuclear plant has generated widespread concern about whether the NRC has learned anything at all from Fukushima.

Diablo Canyon—An American nuclear plant with troubling similarities to Fukushima

The Diablo Canyon Power Plant near scenic San Luis Obispo on the Golden State’s central coast sits in an area where several new fault lines have been discovered over the decades. Controversy flared in 2014 due to revelations about regulatory safety questions from the plant’s former senior resident inspector Michael Peck, who served in that role from 2007-12. Peck became concerned that new seismic data suggested the plant was operating outside the safety margins of its license. He issued a non-concurrence in 2012, a Dissenting Professional Opinion in 2013 and a DPO Appeal in 2014. Debate between Peck and his bosses at the NRC has centered around what methodology should be used to determine whether the plant could survive a massive quake it might not be built to withstand………

Peck went against the politically desired outcome because PG&E was no longer adhering to the parameters of the plant’s license and the NRC was no longer enforcing it.

“Bypassing this regulatory framework was not only irresponsible but also represented a serious violation of the public trust. The amendment process also would have provided public notice and hearing opportunities for these facility safety analysis changes that directly affect the principle safety barriers for ensuring public protection from radiation,” Peck added.

The NRC put together a three-person “independent” panel to rule on Peck’s DPO. Eric Leeds, director of the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, appointed Mike Case, director from the Division of Engineering in the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, as panel chair. Peck, as DPO submitter, was entitled to recommend one panel member and selected NRC’s Rudolph Bernhard, a senior reactor analyst. The other panel member selected by Leeds, Brit Hill, is a bit more curious. Hill is COO of NUTECH Energy Alliance, a Houston-based oilfield services company. He previously spent 13 years working for the notorious Halliburton Company, before moving on to NUTECH (which was co-founded by former Halliburton execs). NRC spokesperson Lara Uselding says Hill has relevant seismic experience and has worked with NRC for almost a decade.

The panel apparently spent almost a year analyzing Peck’s DPO before rejecting it in May of 2014 and declaring that PG&E had satisfied all regulatory requirements…..

Peck’s concerns about circular logic by the NRC drew support of varying parties such as the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and environmental non-profit Friends of the Earth.

Dave Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the UCS, authored a November 2013 report, “Seismic Shift: Diablo Canyon Literally and Figuratively on Shaky Ground,” in which he backed Peck’s concerns and voiced some of his own. “Of the 100 reactors currently operating in the U.S., the two at Diablo Canyon top the NRC’s list as being most likely to experience an earthquake larger than they are designed to withstand,” wrote Lochbaum.

He cited figures indicating that “the Diablo Canyon reactors are more than 10 times more likely to experience an earthquake larger than they are designed to withstand than the average U.S. reactor” and he calculated that “the chance such a large earthquake will occur at Diablo Canyon over the 40-year lifetime of the plant is … about 1 in 6—which is a toss of a die.”

“PG&E sought to have the NRC increase the SSE value to a level PG&E believed its reactors could withstand, but that had not been justified by a rigorous analysis meeting the NRC’s regulatory standards,” Lochbaum wrote. “David Copperfield and other magicians get paid when performing such feats of illusion. PG&E also gets paid for its illusion from the revenue generated by the continuing operation of Diablo Canyon’s two reactors.”

Lochbaum used the NRC’s seismic data to calculate that Diablo Canyon could be expected to suffer an earthquake larger than its SSE every 256 years. Reached by email, he put that number into context by comparing it with what happened at Fukushima.

“That seems like a fairly rare event. But for comparison, the odds that Fukushima would experience a tsunami as large as it experienced on March 11, 2011, were about one such tsunami every 1,000 years or so … So, Diablo Canyon is nearly four times more likely to experience an earthquake larger than its SSE than Fukushima was to experience its devastating tsunami,” Lochbaum explained………http://ecowatch.com/2015/03/24/doomsday-clock-diablo-canyon/2/