earthquake

— May 15, 2025: Top seismologist urges immediate shutdown of Diablo Canyon nuclear reactors citing “unacceptable risk” of an earthquake-triggered meltdown   

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From Mothers for Peace

Award-Winning UCLA Earthquake Scientist Files Declaration to the NRC Requesting Shutdown of Diablo Canyon.

SAN LUIS OBISPO, CA – MAY 15, 2025 – A leading earthquake expert has called for the immediate shutdown of California’s last operating nuclear power plant, warning that a proposed decision by the NRC dismissing seismic risks at Diablo Canyon is incomplete and illogical and fails to address significant evidence that seismic risks are too high to meet federal safety standards. 

In a formal declaration submitted today to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Petition Review Board (PRB),  Dr. Peter Bird, Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at UCLA, states that continued operation of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant (DCPP) presents “an unacceptable risk of a serious earthquake-caused accident,” and that the NRC is obligated to shut it down under its own safety guidelines.

Dr. Bird’s declaration criticized the NRC for refusing to open an enforcement proceeding sought a year ago by environmental organizations. Instead, the NRC parroted unsupported and illogical claims by PG&E that the reactors are safe to operate and ignored Dr. Bird’s strong evidence and analysis demonstrating that the risk of an earthquake-caused core damage accident at DCPP is high enough to warrant immediate shutdown under the NRC’s own guidance.  

 “I continue to hold the view that the risk of a serious earthquake-caused accident at DCPP is unacceptable, and that immediate shutdown is warranted under NRC’s existing guidelines,” wrote Dr. Bird, a globally recognized authority in earthquake modeling with nearly five decades of experience.

Submitted on behalf of petitioners San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace (SLOMFP), Friends of the Earth (FoE) and the Environmental Working Group (EWG), Dr. Bird’s declaration criticized the NRC for failing to conduct a competent and independent review of “grave concerns regarding the severe risk of an earthquake-induced accident during continued operation of Diablo Canyon nuclear reactors.” 

Dr. Peter Bird now serves as Professor of Geophysics and Geology, Emeritus at UCLA with 49 years of experience in seismic activity and earthquake modeling. Holding a doctorate in Geophysics from MIT, Dr. Bird is the founding architect of the Global Earthquake Activity Model (2015). 

The Bird declaration to the NRC warns that PG&E’s modeling for seismic activity “assumes that a majority of large earthquakes affecting Diablo Canyon are strike-slip and disregards the significant contribution of thrust faulting earthquake sources under the Diablo Canyon site.”

The nuclear reactors at Diablo Canyon, owned and operated by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), were slated to close in 2024 and 2025 when its operating licenses were set to retire because the plants would eventually become “too expensive to operate” compared to available renewable energy resources. The “Joint Proposal” to shut Diablo Canyon, signed by environmental groups, unions, and PG&E was certified by the CA Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in 2018. It did not address the unacceptably high risk for a seismic-induced reactor meltdown. However, the reactors’ licenses were extended after California Governor Gavin Newsom brokered a deal with PG&E, offering a $1.4 billion taxpayer-funded subsidy to keep the DCPP operational. 

Hallie Templeton, an attorney for FoE, said: “Allowing Diablo Canyon to operate without a competent and independent review of the seismic risks addressed in the petition puts millions of California residents in danger and risks a major radioactive disaster, akin to Fukushima, along the California coast. PG&E can’t say they haven’t been warned.”  

Diane Curran, legal counsel for SLOMFP, said: “We are very disappointed with the NRC’s proposed decision to allow DCPP to keep operating without a full review of the significant seismic risk to the reactors. It would be irrational and irresponsible for the NRC to permit PG&E to operate DCPP, especially with an aging and deteriorating Unit 1 reactor vessel, without addressing the concerns brought forward by one of the world’s top seismic experts. Listen to the science!”

Bernadette Del Chiaro, Senior Vice President, California at EWG, said: “The potential environmental and human health consequences of a major radioactive disaster along the California coast, similar to the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi incident, are simply unacceptable. It is imperative that all possible precautions are taken to ensure the structural integrity and operational safety of a nuclear facility located in an area with ‘unacceptable risk of earthquakes. The risks highlighted in the petition warrant an unbiased and expert evaluation to determine the true extent of the potential dangers to Californians. To keep Diablo open without this crucial review would place countless lives in jeopardy.”

https://mothersforpeace.org/may-15-2025-top-seismologist-urges-immediate-shutdown-of-diablo-canyon-nuclear-reactor-citing-unacceptable-risk-of-an-earthquake-triggered-meltdown/

— Tsunami warning issued after 7.3 magnitude earthquake in Japan

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From Sputnik

11-22-16 (Japan Time)

Residents near the Fukushima coast are being urged to flee to high ground after a 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck the area early on Tuesday.

The epicenter of the earthquake was approximately 67 kilometers northeast of Iwaki, according to the US Geological Survey.

The Japanese Meteorological Center has warned that there is a risk of a tsunami at any moment. MORE DETAILS TO FOLLOW

https://sputniknews.com/asia/201611221047688394-tsunami-warning-japan-earthquake/

— Fukushima: they knew — will “completely and utterly fail in an earthquake”

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To financially assist this type of courageous journalism, go to http://www.gregpalast.com

From Greg Palast
Thursday, November 10, 2011

“Completely and Utterly Fail in an Earthquake”
The Fukushima story you didn’t hear on CNN

by Greg Palast
for FreePress.org

I’ve seen a lot of sick stuff in my career, but this was sick on a new level.

Here was the handwritten log kept by a senior engineer at the nuclear power plant:

Wiesel was very upset. He seemed very nervous. Very agitated. . . . In fact, the plant was riddled with problems that, no way on earth, could stand an earth- quake. The team of engineers sent in to inspect found that most of these components could “completely and utterly fail” during an earthquake.

“Utterly fail during an earthquake.” And here in Japan was the quake and here is the utter failure.

The warning was in what the investigations team called The Notebook, which I’m not supposed to have.  Good thing I’ve kept a copy anyway, because the file cabinets went down with my office building ….

WORLD TRADE CENTER TOWER 1, FIFTY-SECOND FLOOR
NEW YORK, 1986

[This is an excerpt in FreePress.org from Vultures’ Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Fraudsters, to be released this Monday.  Click here to get the videos and the book.]

Two senior nuclear plant engineers were spilling out their souls and files on our huge conference table, blowing away my government investigations team with the inside stuff about the construction of the Shoreham, New York, power station.

The meeting was secret. Very secret. Their courage could destroy their careers: No engineering firm wants to hire a snitch, even one who has saved thousands of lives. They could lose their jobs; they could lose everything. They did. That’s what happens. Have a nice day.

On March 12 this year, as I watched Fukushima melt, I knew:  the “SQ” had been faked.  Anderson Cooper said it would all be OK.  He’d flown to Japan, to suck up the radiation and official company bullshit.  The horror show was not the fault of Tokyo Electric, he said, because the plant was built to withstand only an 8.0 earthquake on the Richter scale, and this was 9.0.  Anderson must have been in the gym when they handed out the facts.  The 9.0 shake was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 90 miles away.  It was barely a tenth of that power at Fukushima.

I was ready to vomit.  Because I knew who had designed the plant, who had built it and whom Tokyo Electric Power was having rebuild it:  Shaw Construction.  The latest alias of Stone & Webster, the designated builder for every one of the four new nuclear plants that the Obama Administration has approved for billions in federal studies.

But I had The Notebook, the diaries of the earthquake inspector for the company.  I’d squirreled it out sometime before the Trade Center went down.  I shouldn’t have done that.  Too bad.

All field engineers keep a diary. Gordon Dick, a supervisor, wasn’t sup- posed to show his to us. I asked him to show it to us and, reluctantly, he directed me to these notes about the “SQ” tests.

SQ is nuclear-speak for “Seismic Qualification.” A seismically qualified nuclear plant won’t melt down if you shake it. A “seismic event” can be an earthquake or a Christmas present from Al Qaeda. You can’t run a nuclear reactor in the USA or Europe or Japan without certified SQ.

This much is clear from his notebook: This nuclear plant will melt down in an earthquake. The plant dismally failed to meet the Seismic I (shaking) standards required by U.S. and international rules.

Here’s what we learned: Dick’s subordinate at the nuclear plant, Robert Wiesel, conducted the standard seismic review. Wiesel flunked his company. No good. Dick then ordered Wiesel to change his report to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, change it from failed to passed. Dick didn’t want to make Wiesel do it, but Dick was under the gun himself, acting on direct command from corporate chiefs. From The Notebook:

Wiesel was very upset. He seemed very nervous. Very agitated. [He said,] “I believe these are bad results and I believe it’s reportable,” and then he took the volume of federal regulations from the shelf and went to section 50.55(e), which describes reportable deficiencies at a nuclear plant and [they] read the section together, with Wiesel pointing to the appropriate paragraphs that federal law clearly required [them and the company] to report the Category II, Seismic I deficiencies.

Wiesel then expressed his concern that he was afraid that if he [Wiesel] reported the deficiencies, he would be fired, but that if he didn’t report the deficiencies, he would be breaking a federal law. . . .

The law is clear. It is a crime not to report a safety failure. I could imagine Wiesel standing there with that big, thick rule book in his hands, The Law. It must have been heavy. So was his paycheck. He weighed the choices: Break the law, possibly a jail-time crime, or keep his job.

What did Wiesel do? What would you do?

Why the hell would his company make this man walk the line? Why did they put the gun to his head, to make him conceal mortal danger? It was the money. It’s always the money. Fixing the seismic problem would have cost the plant’s owner half a billion dollars easy. A guy from corporate told Dick, “Bob is a good man. He’ll do what’s right. Don’t worry about Bob.”

That is, they thought Bob would save his job and career rather than rat out the company to the feds.

But I think we should all worry about Bob. The company he worked for, Stone & Webster Engineering, built or designed about a third of the nuclear plants in the United States.

From the fifty-second floor we could look at the Statue of Liberty. She didn’t look back.

***

Greg Palast is the author of Vultures’ Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Carnivores.

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Fukushima: They Knew