On this page you’ll find links to recent news reports and articles related to our NoNukesCA mission.
Expanding landslide still threatens San Diego railroad connection
Trains remain suspended as experts evaluate San Clemente slope to determine extent of problem and possible fixes
Local officials examine a landslide Friday at Casa Romantica in San Clemente (Phil Diehl)
By Phil Diehl April 28, 2023 5:34 PM PT
A hillside continued to slide Friday above the railroad tracks at San Clemente, where a day earlier concerned transit officials suspended all passenger and freight train traffic on the only link between Orange and San Diego counties.
The new and possibly lengthy shutdown comes less than two weeks after full service resumed following a nearly six-month suspension of passenger trains caused by a different landslide two miles away. It is the third lengthy disruption of service in the area since 2021.
The latest slide originated at the back patio of the Casa Romantica Cultural Center and Gardens, a 1920s-era estate owned by the city of San Clemente since the 1980s and used for special events such as weddings and festivals. Built by the city’s founder, Ole Hanson, the hilltop location overlooking the tracks and the municipal pier is a registered historic landmark and much loved by many residents.
A bowl-shaped scoop of soil about 20 feet deep fell away from the lot Wednesday night, taking part of the hilltop and ocean-view concrete patio with it. The scoop slid another eight or 10 feet down the hill Thursday night and continued moving slowly Friday, officials said.
TEPCO running out of space to store radioactive slurry at plant
By RYO SASAKI/ Staff Writer
April 27, 2023 at 07:00 JST
The Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is running out of storage space for slurry, a mud-like waste product containing radioactive materials removed from contaminated water that is still accumulating at the site.
If the slurry tanks reach full capacity, Tokyo Electric Power Co. may have to review its operations on treating contaminated water. The slurry problem could also destabilize the overall premise of the company’s decommissioning work.
TEPCO said it has come up with measures to deal with the problem, but hurdles remain and some past mistakes must still be addressed.
Slurry is removed from contaminated water through the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS).
The radioactive sludge is then placed in High Integrity Containers (HICs) at a temporary storage facility on an elevated platform on the south side of the No. 1 to No. 4 reactors at the Fukushima plant.
Company’s safety, security violations raise real concerns
BY LYNN MOORER / ENVIRONMENTAL ATTORNEY, LAS CRUCES
SUNDAY, APRIL 23RD, 2023 AT 9:00AM
The record of Holtec International and its CEO Krishna Singh deserve scrutiny in light of Holtec’s efforts to site a spent nuclear fuel facility in Lea County.
Holtec’s nuclear safety record is tarnished by numerous violations. Many arise from the company’s repeated failure to obtain approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) prior to design changes.
Work was halted in 2018 at San Onofre nuclear plant in California when a loose piece of bolt was discovered in a storage canister Holtec manufactured. It had altered the design without permission midway through the fabrication process. Singh termed it “much ado about nothing.” The NRC disagreed, issuing two “safety significant” violations to Holtec.
Holtec management also fail to recognize risks regarding fuel transfer. Holtec personnel working at the San Onofre plant as contractors for Southern California Edison in 2018 did not recognize for almost an hour that a 50-plus-ton canister lowering into an 18-foot concrete silo within the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation – similar to that planned for Lea County – had gotten hung up on a metal flange. This constituted a “near-miss” event. The NRC issued two violations because of Holtec’s management failure, imposing a $116,000 civil penalty on Edison, the licensee.
German Federal Government Concurs with Termination of Plan to Ship Highly Radioactive Spent Fuel from Germany to U.S. DOE’s Savannah River Site in South CarolinaDecade-long Effort Funded by Germany to Develop Reprocessing Technique at SRS for Irradiated Graphite Fuel has Ended, Thus No Dumping of German Waste in Tanks and Trenches at SRS
https://srswatch.org/ Columbia, South Carolina For Immediate Release, April 19, 2023 Contact: Tom Clements, director, SRS Watch, tel. 803-834-3084, srswatch@gmail.com
Columbia, SC – Documents obtained from Germany make it crystal clear that plans to ship highly radioactive spent fuel from storage in Germany to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina have been terminated with the agreement of key German federal government agencies.
The documents, from a formal community meeting near the spent fuel storage site in Juelich, Germany, bring the ultimate blow to a decade-long plan to bring highly radioactive graphite spent fuel to SRS:
“Rückführung in die USA (im Einvernehmen mit der Bundesregierung BEENDET)”
“Return shipment to the USA (terminated in agreement with the federal government)”
The documents include a presentation by the company managing the spent fuel, Jülicher Entsorgungsgesellschaft für Nuklearanlagen (JEN), and the minutes of the meeting held on March 6, 2023 in Juelich (in western Germany, near Aachen). The highly radioactive waste in question consists 152 casks of around 300,000 irradiated graphite balls impregnated with uranium, used as fuel in the long-closed gas-cooled AVR reactor at Juelich.
Friends of the Earth Sues PG&E Over Diablo Canyon Nuclear Extension
“We hope our litigation can push PG&E to reconsider its potential breach and uphold its obligations, including preparing for the agreed-upon retirement,” FOE’s legal director explained.
The environmental group Friends of the Earth on Tuesday sued Pacific Gas and Electric in a bid to block the California utility giant from breaching its contract to shutter the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant when the operating licenses for its two reactors expire in 2024 and 2025. Friends of the Earth (FOE) explained the reason for its lawsuit, which was filed in San Francisco Superior Court, in a statement Tuesday: In 2016, Friends of the Earth entered into a contract with PG&E to retire Diablo Canyon. This was in exchange for Friends of the Earth dropping a separate legal challenge over environmental and public safety concerns associated with the power plant’s continued operations. Diablo Canyon—California’s last remaining nuclear plant—is located in San Luis Obispo near at least three seismic fault lines, which puts the entire state at risk of a devastating accident. It also operates on an outdated cooling system that puts marine life and water quality at significant risk of harm. Friends of the Earth’s new lawsuit follows recent actions by PG&E that indicate an intent to breach the 2016 contract. These include applying to the U.S. Department of Energy for funding to aid Diablo’s extended operations and securing approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to continue operating Diablo Canyon beyond the expiration of current operating licenses while NRC considers PG&E’s forthcoming license renewal applications.
Over and out: Germany switches off the last of its remaining nuclear plants
“Nuclear, no thanks!”
What was once a slogan found on the bumper of many a German car became a reality Saturday, as the country shut down its three remaining nuclear power plants [out of a total of 17] in line with a long-planned transition toward renewable energy.
The shutdown of Emsland, Neckarwestheim II and Isar II shortly before midnight drew cheers from anti-nuclear campaigners outside the three reactors and at rallies in Berlin and Munich. Inside the plants, staff held more sombre ceremonies to mark the occasion.
Decades of anti-nuclear protests in Germany, stoked by disasters at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, had put pressure on successive governments to end the use of a technology that critics argue is unsafe and unsustainable.
Why Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Won’t Help Counter the Climate Crisis
One in a series of articles on “None of the Above”
Small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs, are designed to generate less than 300 megawatts of electricity – several times less than typical reactors, which have a range of 1,000 to 1,600 MW. While the individual standardized modules would be small, plans typically call for several modules to be installed at a single power generation site.
The nuclear industry and the U. S. Department of Energy are promoting the development of SMRs, supposedly to head off the most severe impacts of climate change. But are SMRs a practical and realistic technology for this purpose?
The worst of plans
Posted on March 19, 2023 by beyondnuclearinternational
Dumping Fukushima contaminated water is a “cheap and dirty” approach that must be stopped
By Tilman Ruff
As soon as within a month or two, Japan could begin dumping into the Pacific Ocean 1.3 million tons of treated but still radioactively contaminated wastewater from the stricken Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant. Construction of the kilometer long undersea discharge tunnel and a complex of pipes feeding it commenced last August.
This cheap and dirty approach of ‘out of sight out of mind’ and ‘dilution is the solution to pollution’ belongs in a past century. It ignores the significant transboundary, transgenerational and human rights issues involved in this planned radioactive dumping, projected to continue over the next 40 years.
Nuclear Plant Shuts Down After New Leak Near Mississippi River
Federal regulators are monitoring the area amid concerns that radioactive materials could wind up in drinking water.
By Jake Johnson , COMMONDREAMS Published March 24, 2023
Xcel Energy’s Monticello nuclear power plant is pictured in Monticello, Minnesota. KAREN BLEIER / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
The operator of a Minnesota nuclear power plant said the facility would be taken offline Friday to repair a new leak near the Mississippi River, an announcement that came a week after the company and state officials belatedly acknowledged a separate leak that occurred in November.
Xcel Energy insisted in a statement Thursday that the leak at its Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant poses “no risk to the public or the environment,” but a team of federal regulators is monitoring the groundwater in the area amid concerns that radioactive materials — specifically tritium — could wind up in drinking water.
Valerie Myers, a senior health physicist with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told a local CBS affiliate that “there are wells between the ones that are showing elevated tritium and the Mississippi that are not showing any elevated levels.”
Why were studies canceled?
Posted on March 12, 2023 by beyondnuclearinternational
Federal agencies won’t look at cancer impacts of commercial nuclear facilities
By Cindy Folkers
By Cindy FolkersIf you thought the government of the United States, the country with the most nuclear power reactors in the world, might be interested in finding out the cancer impact of nuclear power on our children, you’d be wrong. But, our government is willing to give failed, uneconomic, decaying nuclear power reactors oodles of taxpayer money without first figuring out if and how they harm our children. Assessing potential health damage should be a prerequisite for reactor license renewal.
Citizens and lawmakers from California have been working to revivify a cancelled National Academy of Sciences (NAS) health study originally requested and funded by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 2010. The study was to have been carried out in two phases. The first phase “identified scientifically sound approaches for carrying out an assessment of cancer risks” that would inform the study design(s) to be carried out in Phase 2.
Phase 1 recommended examining seven pilot sites, six of which are operating or closed nuclear power plants: Big Rock Point (MI, closed), Dresden (IL), Haddam (CT, closed), Millstone (CT), Oyster Creek (NJ), and San Onofre (CA, closed). The seventh site, Nuclear Fuel Services (TN), is a fuel processing and stockpile conversion facility.
Nuclear Question: Debate continues over long-term storage of nuclear waste in the Great Lakes
Canada’s plan to store spent nuclear fuel 1,600 feet below ground in the Great Lakes basin, some 30 miles from Lake Huron, is continuing to ruffle feathers throughout the Great Lakes states.
Earlier this month, U.S. lawmakers called out the Canadian plan for failing to prioritize the health of the Great Lakes and the 40 million residents who depend on it for clean drinking water ahead of its own energy needs.
Michigan Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee is leading a 20-member bipartisan group calling on President Joe Biden to pressure Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to halt the plans for storing an anticipated 57,000 tons of high-level radioactive material within the basin.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, in a statement on the ongoing legal battle over the future of Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline, accused the Canadian federal government of “adding even more risk to our waters” by allowing plans to store radioactive nuclear waste in a 1,400-acre underground warehouse to proceed.
Yet despite concerns within the basin from politicians and environmental groups, and unrest among local farmers worried about water contamination and potentially tanking property values, the project is moving ahead as planned. Geologic testing at one location in southern Ontario began this spring.
BY GREG M. SCHWARTZ - Counter Punch
Environmental groups concerned about cost and safety issues at the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in San Luis Obispo County on California’s central coast thought they’d scored a big win in 2018 when a Joint Proposal was approved by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to retire the aging plant by 2025. But like a zombie, Diablo Canyon’s operating life was resurrected until at least 2030 this past summer when California Governor Gavin Newsom rammed a last-minute bill through the California legislature to keep the plant going.
Michael Peck – Diablo Canyon’s senior resident safety inspector from 2007-2012 – tells me the plant should’ve been shut down years ago due to a faulty licensing process that disregarded crucial seismic data indicating the plant is vulnerable to a Fukushima type of nightmare.
Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant suffered a catastrophic triple meltdown and radiation release in 2011 when a magnitude 9.0 earthquake triggered a tsunami that topped protective sea walls and overwhelmed the reactors. 150,000 people were evacuated as radioactivity spewed into the air and ocean. The catastrophe – deemed a man-made disaster due to regulatory collusion – was the direct cause of nearly 4,000 deaths and remains an ongoing calamity; disposal of vast quantities of radioactive wastewater stored onsite remains an intractable problem.
More than 170 organizations objected to using federal subsidies to delay the closure of Diablo Canyon, which opened in 1984-85. But that didn’t stop the Department of Energy from recently awarding California a $1.1 billion subsidy to resuscitate Diablo Canyon. The writing was on the wall in the spring when Newsom voiced “worst case scenario” concerns about rolling blackouts that put Diablo Canyon back “on the table as an option”. Senator Dianne Feinstein followed with a predictably like-minded editorial in the Sacramento Bee, claiming California wasn’t yet ready to achieve its renewable energy goals as planned.
From: Tom Elias -California Focus, CV Star
The benefits to Pacific Gas & Electric Co. from keeping the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near San Luis Obispo open longer than previously scheduled are now very clear: electricity customers all over California soon will almost certainly be paying the big utility for not producing power.
That’s the apparent bottom line, after Diablo Canyon shut down for substantial periods twice in the last six months because PG&E violated its own management procedures.
The outages at the huge generating station, which when working can produce 8.5% of all power created in California, came when a hydrogen cooling system within the plant’s Unit 2 leaked and had to be shut down manually.
Resulting energy losses from Diablo Canyon demonstrated the plant’s unreliability, which was also on view in 2020-21, when the facility experienced 149 days of unplanned outages over a 476-day period. Essentially, Diablo produced little or nothing over one third of that time.
PG&E customers are likely to be dunned $178.6 million for the costs of replacement power during the shutdowns of the last 30 months. But the state law that will let Diablo keep operating through 2030, more than five years beyond its previously planned closure date, will have all customers of privately-owned utilities everywhere in California foot the bills for future Diablo problems, up to $300 million.
From NBC Los Angeles — October 15, 2021
Radioactive Waste Fell On Some LA-Area Neighborhoods During 2018 Woolsey Fire, New Study Shows
The majority of samples found just “background” or normally occurring levels of radioactivity. But 11 samples showed significantly elevated levels of radioactive materials.
High levels of radioactive particles landed in neighborhoods from Thousand Oaks to Simi Valley during the massive 2018 Woolsey fire, which started at the contaminated Santa Susana Field Lab, according to a peer-reviewed study just published by a team of scientists known for studying environmental disasters.
What’s stunning about the findings is that they run contrary to what California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) said to calm public fears in the hours after the Woolsey Fire, “We do not believe the fire has caused any releases of hazardous materials… associated with contamination at the [SSFL] site.”
“The DTSC lied. They said that contamination from hadn’t migrated away from Santa Susana and the study proves that it has,” said Jeni Knack, part of a group of volunteers who helped collect samples analyzed in the study.
Knack participated in the sample collection because she had a background doing data collection on archaeological sites, and because she’s the mom of a 6-year old who lives in Simi Valley, just five miles from Santa Susana.
Read more (includes video report)
2015: California’s lieutenant governor on Friday directed the State Lands Commission to draw up a plan for a thorough environmental review of PG&E’s Diablo Canyon power plant, the state’s last operational nuclear power plant. PG&E’s leases with the state for two structures associated with the 2,240-MW power plant, which is located on the coastline in San Luis Obispo County, are set to expire in 2018 and 2019, respectively. PG&E is looking to extend those leases through 2025. The lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom, said the plant should have to pass a broad California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review, which it was not subject to prior to opening in 1985. “On the one hand we have Fukushima etched in our memories, and on the other hand we are tackling fossil-fuel-driven climate change,” Newsom said. “This is incredibly complex and of no surprise that decisions have been avoided.” read more
CapeDownwinders rally at the Sagamore Bridge in Massachusetts on May 13, 2012. (Photo: CapeDownWinders)
Published on Wednesday, October 14, 2015 by Common Dreams Another US Nuke Bites the Dust
by Harvey Wasserman Nuclear Shutdown News – March, 2015 Edition Diablo Canyon – Last Nuke Plant in California San Diego Free Press The following article was posted on March 4th, 2015, in the New Times – Volume 29, Issue 32
Fukushima at 4 The root cause–and cause for concern BY ROCHELLE BECKER
On March 11, the fourth anniversary of the tragic nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Californians should pause to consider both their good luck and their potential fate. Luck, that Mother Nature has not yet thrown her full force against the state’s last remaining nuclear power plant; and fate that Diablo Canyon’s days as a power—and revenue—generator may be numbered. read more Nuclear power: Energy for the future or relic of the past? By Richard Anderson Business reporter, BBC News Group rallies to support Diablo Canyon, nuclear energy Fukushima Nuclear Radiation Spikes 7,000% as Contaminated Water Pours into the Ocean Natural News Thursday, February 26, 2015 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War: The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation By Prof Michel Chossudovsky Anti-Fracking and No Nukes Activists Join Forces Demanding Renewable Energy Revolution Harvey Wasserman’s Radio Show Listen to the passionate hour-long dialog on saving our Earth with long-time anti-fracking activist David Braun who speaks with Linda Seeley of the San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, the legendary grassroots group that has fought Diablo Canyon for more than four decades. The Not-So-Peaceful Atom By Japhet Weeks – North Coast Journal Bob Rowen accidentally took on corporate nuclear power in the 1970s. Four decades later he remembers what it was like to be Humboldt County’s most infamous whistleblower. ‘Doomsday Clock’ Ticks Forward: Climate Change, Nuclear Weapons Push Humanity Closer Towards Global Catastrophe ‘Doomsday Clock’ now at three minutes to midnight Because of a very high probably of global catastrophe, the Bulletin urges that action be taken to keep global warming from rising above the 2-degree target, deal with nuclear waste storage, rein in spending on nuclear weapons modernization programs, and recommit to disarmament. Michal Mariotte/GreenWorld: FirstEnergy Wants Another Nuke Bailout Nuclear IOU’s want bailouts, not a ‘free market.’ Their failed business model totally depends on the public purse. Getting Rid Of Old Nuclear Reactors Worldwide Is Going To Cost Way More Than People Think As ageing first-generation reactors close, the true cost of decommissioning will be crucial for the future of the nuclear industry, already ailing following the 2011 Fukushima disaster and competition from cheap shale gas, falling oil prices and a flood of renewable energy from wind and solar. The rightwing case against nuclear power By Peter Franklin Allister Heath isn’t against nuclear power on principle, rather he believes that we need to concentrate energy sources that won’t have to be subsidised by the state for decades to come. Rebranding the nuclear weapons complex won’t reform it by Robert Alvarez Finally, the most recent study of the weapons complex raises a fundamental question: Could it be that the “orphan” status of nuclear weapons in the United States reflects not presidential and congressional inattention, but changing priorities in the real world of international security? When the president spoke last year of “reducing the role of nuclear weapons in our security strategy,” he seemed to unequivocally answer this question. By rebranding the Energy Department in a way that gives nuclear weapons production equal status with the whole of US energy policy, the congressional panel has tried to impose on the government a Cold War urgency that does not reflect the actual relevance of nuclear weaponry in the 21st century. FirstEnergy rate plan pummeled during PUCO hearing as 80 demand to testify By John Funk, The Plain Dealer CLEVELAND, Ohio — A sharply critical crowd of about 200 FirstEnergy customers and critics poured into Cleveland City Council chambers Tuesday night to vent rage about the company’s latest rate proposal, and at times, its actions over the last decade. Did the NRC and PG&E collude to hide danger? Statement by Friends of the Earth Mercury News editorial: It’s a new day at the PUC Mercury News Editorial Don’t count on Diablo License renewal is not a foregone conclusion BY ROCHELLE BECKER Lawrence Livermore National Lab to test plutonium using NIF laser By Jeremy Thomas jethomas@bayareanewsgroup.com The Ongoing Human Impact From Fukushima Daiichi SimplyInfo.org Fukushima & Nuclear News Roundup Jan 11, 2015 What the US can learn from Germany’s stunning environmental movement Ben Goossen New Report: Beyond Utility 2.0 to Energy Democracy