San Luis Obispo Green Party
P.O. Box 13244, San Luis Obispo, CA USA 93406

HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE STORAGE AT DIABLO CANYON

The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant was originally designed, licensed and built to store 506 highly radioactive waste units, misleadingly called "spent" fuel assemblies, for about five years. NOW, PG&E wants to store nearly 10 times as much at the Diablo site, which sits right on the coastline, just 10 miles away from the city of San Luis Obispo and only 3 miles from an active earthquake fault! Worse, storage would last at least 30 more years or even indefinitely, depending upon construction of a national permanent repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, which at this time, remains to be controversial and in question.

High-level radioactive waste ("spent" fuel) is an extremely hazardous substance that would kill an unprotected person standing next to it in mere seconds. With every day of continued operation, Diablo produces more of this deadly waste that will remain toxic for at least a quarter of a million years or 12,000 human generations!

According to studies by the US Dept. of Energy (DOE) and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), a catastrophic release of radioactivity into our air, water and soil could happen through big earthquakes, accidental dropping of storage/loading casks and sabotage/terrorists attacks. At worse, radioactive contamination of an area half the size of Pennsylvania with countless human deaths and illness through radiation exposure is possible. Clean-up costs in such a case are estimated by the NRC to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars with years of evacuation of the afflicted areas. No other man-made calamity can even remotely match this kind of catastrophic disaster potential in our county.

Under the new PG&E proposal 4,416 "spent" fuel assemblies would be stored at Diablo in dry casks and in already existing water filled pools. Each assembly contains the equivalent in long-lived radioactivity of 10 times the amount released by the Hiroshima Bomb! [1] Total radioactivity would reach the staggering equivalent of 44,160 Hiroshima Bombs! By 2006, when the pools are full, they will contain roughly 40 times the amount of Cesium-137 than was released in the Chernobyl accident and caused most of the off-site contamination there. [2] The pools have NO containment protection and are vulnerable to terrorist attacks or sabotage. In October 2000, the NRC found that, in a worst-case scenario, as much as 100% of the cesium-137 could be released into the environment.

Transporting these deadly wastes somewhere else is no solution. This would only contaminate new sites and spread the dangers of catastrophic radiation release to thousands of communities along the transportation routes throughout the United States. There is only one solution: Stop producing radioactive waste!!

If it is done correctly, monitored dry cask storage at Diablo Canyon may be the least of evils. However, on-site storage must only be considered for the already accumulated high-level radioactive waste AND only if all SLO GREEN Party demands are met! We are also concerned that PG&E's bankruptcy could lead to a slackening of safety and environmental standards.

In light of the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01;

AND given the fact that far too many lethal wastes have already accumulated in vulnerable storage pools;

AND in consideration of dangers to populations along transportation routes;

AND in acknowledgement of the rights of people near potential dump sites;

AND in light of recent studies of increased seismic dangers at the San Onofre Nuclear Plant near San Diego the SLO GREEN PARTY demands:

[1] "Hiroshima Bombs" are rough estimates developed by Dr. Marvin Resnikoff of Radioactive Waste Management Associates and are used for comparison purposes only. Nuclear explosions cannot occur. Despite numerous requests, PG&E has not released exact statistics.

[2] Chernobyl comparison by Robert Alvarez, former senior policy advisor in the US Department of Energy.

Green Party of California
SLO Green Party
P.O. Box 13244
San Luis Obispo, CA 93406

For more info or to get involved contact Klaus @ 805/238-4454 or jayklaus@msn.com

To contact the SLO GREEN Party: 805/545-9838 or visit www.slo.greens.org