Battle for Diablo Power Plant Still a War of Attrition

For almost a week now, the Unit I reactor at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant has been doing something that a generation of foes vowed would never happen. It is producing commercial power for more than 1 million customers of Pacific Gas & Electric Co.

That such a milestone could be reached says something about the persistence of the San Francisco-based utility, which saw its plant fall a decade behind schedule and $5 billion over its original budget of about $300 million.

But the fact that PG&E; still cannot claim the battle of Diablo Canyon to be over says something about the persistence of a band of Central California residents and public interest lawyers, who continue to fight the utility over the issue of the plant’s safety.

“I don’t like the use of the past tense. The fight is still going on,” said Sandy Silver, a founder of Mothers for Peace, the San Luis Obispo organization that brought suit to block the plant’s operation. “It has to continue because the plant is not safe.”

New Court Hearing

Indeed, even as PG&E; was preparing for last week’s beginning of commercial generation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was ordering a rehearing for next December on the issue of whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should have held separate hearings on an earthquake safety issue before issuing the plant’s operating license last August.

The new hearing could delay plans by PG&E; to put the second reactor into commercial service by early next year. Fuel loading of Unit II has already begun.

The issue before the court is not the design of the plant--which now meets stricter Nuclear Regulatory Commission standards set down after the presence of an active earthquake fault was discovered offshore in the early 1970s--but whether an earthquake would, for example, cut off evacuation routes needed by surrounding communities if there were also a nuclear emergency at the power plant.

“I don’t think the building will fall down,” Silver said. “It’s a concrete and steel building. But what we’re worried about is the pipes. All you need is one of those cooling pipes to snap and we’ve got a meltdown on our hands.”

Ready to Flee

“We’re very concerned,” she said. “We do notice which way the wind blows. That’s on our minds. We do have full tanks of gas or half tanks of gas so we can get out of here.”

PG&E;, which insists that the plant is as safe as any structure can be, obviously prefers not to dwell on future legal challenges. Instead, it likes to discuss what it believes the plant will do for its customers.

“This is a tribute to human persistence and the human spirit,” PG&E; spokesman Ron Weinberg said. “It’s just unfortunate that it had to be completed under the circumstances of so many delays and so many needless and meaningless things that raised the cost. This plant will mark the beginning of a new era in terms of energy generation in California. It is a major accomplishment.”

But during a plant tour last week, Weinberg conceded that the plant is safer because of the protests.

“In a way, the intervention (by opponents) is one of the reasons why the plant is probably as good as it is because, certainly, they made us look a lot harder,” he said. “If we had an earthquake today I hope and pray that I’m inside that building because that is the place to be. That is a fortress. It’s probably the most sophisticated building in the world in terms of its ability to resist earthquakes.”

Nevertheless, he added, “in many ways we paid a very heavy price. The question is, is it appreciably better? I wonder. I really wonder if it is.”

Originally, Diablo Canyon was designed to withstand a quake of 6.75 on the Richter scale of magnitude. But that was before the discovery of the offshore Hosgri Fault, which the U.S. Geological Survey said could produce a major earthquake of 7.5 magnitude.

Eventually, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ordered the utility to redesign the plant to withstand a 7.5 quake, a redesign that PG&E; said had cost “hundreds of millions of dollars.”

When the redesign was undertaken, however, the Hosgri Fault was believed to be entirely offshore. Now there are indications, reported in scientific research papers, that the fault may actually dip at an angle beneath the coastline, thus increasing its destructive potential.

James Brune, a professor of geophysics at the University of California, San Diego, said there is a need to determine whether there are branches of the Hosgri Fault that actually bisect the power plant.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has directed PG&E; to undertake extensive studies of the area and report its findings by 1988.

Meanwhile, PG&E; is gearing up for another battle--this one before the California Public Utilities Commission--over its application to raise the rates of consumers to pay for the $5 billion in over-budget costs caused by a decade of delays.

Initially, PG&E; is asking for a 3.5% interim rate increase of $183 million, which, it says, would cost the average household an added $1.33 a month. Eventually, the utility will ask for a 14% increase, costing $5.60 a month.

“That is going to be peanuts compared to the amount of money saved by the operation of this plant,” Weinberg said. “It’s going to be billions of dollars in savings to consumers. While their rates may not go down, they’re going to go up at a much slower rate.