ML24348A243
| ML24348A243 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Diablo Canyon  |
| Issue date: | 12/13/2024 |
| From: | Public Commenter Public Commenter |
| To: | NRC/NMSS/DREFS |
| NRC/NMSS/DREFS | |
| References | |
| 89FR87433 | |
| Download: ML24348A243 (3) | |
Text
From:
Eric Greening <dancingsilverowl@gmail.com>
Sent:
Friday, December 13, 2024 1:11 PM To:
DiabloCanyonEnvironmental.Resource
Subject:
[External_Sender] Eric Greening comments on Draft EIS on Diablo Relicensing Hello!
Thank you for providing a variety of ways to comment! I made oral comments at the ZOOM hearing last month, raising two principal issues: the need to consider the impacts of the sourcing of 20 years' worth of fuel--the Uranium mining and its impact on miners and communities--as part of the impacts of this project, and the inadequacy of the sections on transportation, for failing to recognize current incidents of congestion, their likely exacerbation with industrialization of Port San Luis to serve offshore wind arrays and with a construction project on Highway 101 through Shell Beach that could cause chronic backups for a couple of years, and the failure to evaluate or mitigate the inadequacy of these roads in an evacuation scenario.
I continue to affirm the importance of genuinely addressing these issues, and would add a grave concern with a tsunami threat that could occasion such an evacuation scenario, and the recklessness of adding another 20 years to the storage of hot fuel in pools that could be drained, leading to criticality and release, if the cool water intake is dislodged by a substantial tsunami.
Highlighting this concern is the recent Richter 7 earthquake in the area of the notorious Triple Junction off Cape Mendocino. The lack of a substantial tsunami from this warning shake should not falsely reassure us. First, the Triple Junction is capable of 9+ on the Richter Scale, more than 100 times the intensity of the recent 7. Second, the recent 7 was limited to horizontal motion from the slip-strike element of the Triple Junction that extends southward as the San Andreas Fault; it is earthquakes with VERTICAL motion of the seafloor that generate the POWERFUL tsunamis. The element of subduction, adjacent to the slip-strike, characterized by the Gorda section of the Juan de Fuca Plate whose downward motion generates Cascade vulcanism, is the historic generator of tsunamis in that region. For all we know, the recent quake may have ADDED STRAIN to the subducting element of the Triple Junction, ringing an alarm bell telling us to empty the "spent" fuel pools in tsunami risk areas as soon as possible.
The last major Cascadian subduction quake was in 1700, and there is evidence that tsunamis on the adjacent coastline reached 100 feet. Thousands of miles away, in Japan, with no warning whatever, tsunamis of 16 feet swept away villages. Clearly, the damage on the North American coast was catastrophic, and oral histories in indigenous traditions of Washington, Oregon, and California continue to convey the traumatic memories, albeit sometimes in symbolic, quasi-mythical form, such as a battle between the thunderbird and a gigantic whale, responsible for wiping out villages and reconfiguring shorelines and estuaries.
I have not been able to find definitive evidence of the height of the 1700 tsunami at Diablo, but it needs to be researched before an EIS is certified. The average recurrence rate of catastrophic Cascadia subduction quakes is less than 250 years, while the last one was 324 years ago, so it could be called overdue, although the rate of recurrence is not always average, with variance between intervals of 577 years to a mere 27. But recurrence during a 20-year relicensing period must be considered a significant
threat, especially if the recent quake was a harbinger that added strain at a point that could soon trigger a major subduction event.
Returning us to the subject of transportation, then, would an evacuation be ordered PRIOR to the arrival of a tsunami to evacuate all vulnerable locales on the immediate coast, and how would this affect a further evacuation to distance the inland population as well from possible release from hot pool criticality? (Remember that a tsunami does not need to reach the level of the power plant to cause havoc; it only needs to dislodge the cool water intake at sea level.) An EIS that would fail to grapple with these issues will not be worthy of certification, and I urge you to fill this critical gap even if it leads to recirculation of a draft with the relevant information, to allow peer review of the seismic assumptions to take place.
Again, thank you for the opportunity to review and comment!
Eric Greening
Federal Register Notice:
89FR87433 Comment Number:
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Subject:
[External_Sender] Eric Greening comments on Draft EIS on Diablo Relicensing Sent Date:
12/13/2024 1:11:08 PM Received Date:
12/13/2024 1:11:26 PM From:
Eric Greening Created By:
dancingsilverowl@gmail.com Recipients:
"DiabloCanyonEnvironmental.Resource" <DiabloCanyonEnvironmental.Resource@nrc.gov>
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