has just omitted from its latest budget any federal aid to the region).
The San Jose Mercury News has speculated that PG&E may have been responsible for the conflagration by failing to maintain power lines that were blown over in a windstorm. Local fire departments were already complaining that trees and underbrush were being sparked by poles and wires PG&E had failed to maintain, though maintenance is required by law.
PG&E now faces a firestorm of lawsuits that could soar well into the billions. Criminal prosecution is also possible.
In 2010, a fire killed eight people and torched an upscale San Bruno neighborhood. The cause was badly maintained gas lines – for which PG&E had been cited repeatedly. Fines exceeded $1.4 billion, but criminal prosecution remains unresolved.
Other costly lapses have plagued PG&E through the years. Some involve Diablo itself, which opened in the mid-1980s amid America’s biggest “No Nukes” civil disobedience campaign, involving thousands of arrests.
Linda Seeley of San Luis Obispo’s Mothers for Peace says the company faces impossible hurdles in dealing with its thousands of tons of radioactive waste. In addition, she notes, “Many very expensive components in the two reactors must be replaced far before the proposed 2024-5 shutdown dates. Our concern is that PG&E may try to sneak through without paying to maintain the reactors even at basic safety levels.”
Michael Peck, a former Nuclear Regulatory Commission in-house inspector at Diablo, has warned that the reactors cannot survive a major earthquake and should close immediately. He has since been transferred to Chattanooga, Tenn.
“Diablo may no longer be profitable,” Seeley has said on my “California Solartopia” show on radio station KPFK. “The cost of wind and solar has dropped so fast it may not pay PG&E to run those plants anymore, even without doing the basic maintenance.”
Because much of Diablo’s aging workforce is retiring or looking elsewhere for job security, PG&E wants subsidies to retain skilled staff to run the place. Judge Allen specifically rejected much of the rate hike designed to meet that crisis.
This article has been excerpted from: ‘Earthquake Risk Keeps Heat on Vulnerable Nuclear Reactors’.
Courtesy: Commondreams.org