February 3, 2009


Contact: Jane Swanson, spokesperson
janeslo@kcbx.net
http://mothersforpeace.org
phone (805) 595-2605


Today Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) announced that it plans to begin loading radioactive wastes into a dry cask at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant on June 1, 2009.

The San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace (MFP) is challenging the licensing of the dry cask storage facility in the Ninth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals. Mothers for Peace intends to persuade the Court that the licensing by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was illegal because it did not comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Therefore any loading of fuel into the casks will be illegal absent a thorough examination of impacts and alternatives that would provide cost-effective protection from the consequences of attacks.

“We have been expecting PG&E to make this announcement, as Diablo Canyon has run out of space in its two spent fuel pools,” states MFP spokesperson Jane Swanson. “MFP is not trying to block the move of fuel from pools to casks, but we do want the NRC to order changes that would make them less vulnerable to terrorist attack.”

Among the measures MFP has asked the NRC to consider are fortifying the casks, or putting them in bunkers, or scattering the cask storage pads over the site so that they would not present one big target. “These are all feasible alternatives for minimizing the impacts of a terrorist attack on the Diablo Canyon facility. The NRC had no lawful basis to ignore them,” according to MFP Attorney Diane Curran.

BACKGROUND

The precedent-setting case began in 2002, when the NRC refused to evaluate the environmental impacts of an attack on the proposed dry cask facility before issuing a permit to Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) to store spent fuel on the site. In 2006, the Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals ordered the NRC to do such a study in compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act. In response, the NRC Staff produced an extremely abbreviated environmental study, devoting just a few pages to its conclusion that the impacts of an attack would be insignificant. MFP's expert witness, Dr. Gordon Thompson of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies, contends that the agency’s technical analysts erred by assuming a cask could be punctured without also recognizing that its contents could be ignited, allowing a large quantity of radioactive cesium and other contaminants to become airborne and transported over a broad geographic area. The resulting damage to public health and the environment would cost billions of dollars.

MFP, an all-volunteer non-profit group, has challenged NRC regulatory practices since 1973, and has litigated issues related to sabotage and terrorism since 1976.