Nuclear Negligence at Diablo - Dan Hirsch
Channel: eon3
Date: 2014-12-13

Déjà vu All Over Again
Daniel Hirsch lays out the long, sad history of PG&E and NRC nuclear negligence and incompetence  at Diablo Canyon in this excerpted testimony before Senator Barbara Boxer's Committee on Environment and Public Works, Dec. 3, 2014.

Hirsch heads CommitteeToBridgeTheGap.org and is a lecturer at the University of California in Santa Cruz.

His testimony shows that from Humboldt Bay to Bodega Head to Diablo Canyon PG&E has consistently chosen nuclear sites on earthquake faults and the NRC has consistently failed to enforce its own seismic safety standards.

Now, although one of it's own Senior Inspectors has reported that Diablo Canyon, located in a tsunami zone near San Luis Obispo, is out of safety compliance and called for the plant's shutdown, the NRC has failed to take action.

Despite the recent discovery that Diablo Canyon sits on the intersections of 13 active earthquake faults capable of releasing far more seismic force than the reactors were designed to withstand, PG&E is applying for an extension of it's operating license without making any upgrades and without a re-licensing hearing. 

As other segments of this historic hearing make painfully clear, the NRC's non-enforcement of it's own rules and staff recommendations post-Fukushima has become standard operating procedure for a so-called 'regulatory agency' more committed to industry profits and the promotion of nuclear energy than the protection of public safety. 

Sadly, this was Senator Boxer's last hearing as Chair of this important Committee.