After an earthquake-triggered tsunami damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan on March 11, 2011, causing the release of radioactive material, it got some people thinking: Could people be adequately evacuated if the same thing happened at Diablo Canyon Power Plant?
In a report issued on March 10, Washington D.C.-based watchdog group Disaster Accountability Project (DAP) concluded that emergency response plans for many of the cities and jurisdictions within the 50-mile evacuation zone are inadequate.
It was one of several reports on nuclear power plants across the U.S. released a day before the five-year anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, considered to be the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.
Diablo Canyon is California’s only active nuclear power plant. In 2008, the Shoreline Fault was discovered less than a mile away from the reactor.
As part of the report, the DAP requested evacuation plans from nine government agencies in Kern, Monterey, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo (SLO) counties, but only received responses from a handful of them. Lompoc was the only one of the nine jurisdictions contacted that didn’t respond to the information request.*
But not so fast, said Lompoc Fire Chief Kurt Latipow, who told the Sun that he never received any request for nuclear response plans. Had he received a request, he would have provided DAP with an interagency response plan that encompasses Lompoc and other jurisdictions within the evacuation zone.
“My perspective is that we have a very robust response plan,” Latipow told the Sun, adding that had he been contacted, he would’ve provided information to DAP.
Even though Lompoc is farther away from Diablo Canyon than other cities, Latipow said an “ingestion pathway” was identified as a radiation exposure risk because of the produce grown in the area.
Guadalupe Director of Public Safety Gary Hoving is also confident in the plan because it exceeds the federal requirements and is tested regularly.
Hoving said he’d be minimally prepared because of his small police department and a lack of evacuation funds, although Guadalupe is still included in the larger plan.
For Guadalupe, Hoving said the plan is to move south, away from the plant. Caltrans would be expected to assist Guadalupe with evacuation along Highway 1, Hoving said, but added that Caltrans’ response would be delayed since more resources would be put into the evacuation route along Highway 101.
“It makes sense in one aspect as well because you have a higher volume on the freeway and you’re going to put more resources there,” Hoving told the Sun. “But people most familiar with the area, such as people from the Five Cities, will come down the 1.”
Santa Maria is not included in the evacuation zone, although the city continues to work with Pacific Gas and Electric (the power plant’s owner) on evacuation drills, according to Mark van de Kamp, the city’s public information officer.
The Fairpark is the designated reception area for evacuees in southern SLO County, van de Kamp said.
If a nuclear disaster occurred at Diablo Canyon, SLO County Emergency Manager Ron Alsop said there would be a calculated evacuation response. Working with meteorologists, Alsop said investigators would immediately begin looking at conditions of the plant to determine a route.
“Our process in SLO is to move people before they are exposed to any potential radiological release,” Alsop told the Sun.
Alsop doesn’t agree with the DAP report and believes it was inadequately researched and possibly rushed to coincide with the Fukushima anniversary.
“We explained to them that we have a joint county emergency response plan,” Alsop said, adding that DAP’s report didn’t include any responses from the county prior to its publication.
According to Ben Smilowitz, executive director of Disaster Accountability Project (DAP), the author of the report, SLO County was offered an opportunity to provide feedback on a courtesy draft of the report before the final report was released to the media. SLO County then sent a letter that DAP reviewed and changes were made to the report as a result, Smilowitz said.*
* CORRECTIONS: March 22, 2016.
This article appears in Mar 17-24, 2016.