MEDIA STATEMENT by Kimberly Roberson on what laxer NRC radiation rules mean for Californians

Contact: Kimberly Roberson, ffan0311@gmail.com Mary Beth Brangan, MBBrangan@protonmail.com

August 11, news brokethat Governor Newsom decided he wouldn't further extend the operating

licenses of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant’s reactors, but leave it to his successor to decide after his term expires at the end of this year. August 12, Kimberly Roberson, Director of the Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network (FFAN) issued the following statement on radiation risks in California, and the potential impacts of looser NRC radiation exposure standards on Californians:

"The Diablo Canyon nuclear plant’s two reactors have been licensed by the NRC to keep running until 2044 and 2045, but the State of California hasn’t signed off on them running past 2029 and 2030. Governor Newsom has left that decision to his successor. Whoever the next Governor is, he or she should not extend Diablo’s operating licenses.

“As long as Diablo operates, and even afterward during the extensive decommissioning process, it will expose nuclear plant workers and all Californians to radiation risks. Proposed new NRC rules on radiation exposure would likely make radiation exposures worse and make plant operations more damaging to public health and the environment.

“Diablo is located on the central coast of San Luis Obispo County, some 45 miles from the Central Valley, the gateway to one of the largest agricultural hubs in the US. A nuclear

accident there would be disastrous for agriculture, dairy, cattle and poultry. Even without an accident, harmful radionuclides like Cesium-137, Strontium-90 and many others are vented

into the air and discharged into the Pacific just from routine plant operations, where they get into our environment –air, soil, water, food -- and bodies. Diablo emits tritium and Carbon-14, radioactive isotopes of water and carbon that can't be separated out by ordinary filtration, and

in any case aren't being filtered, so they are escaping into the environment, where they bioaccumulate.

“Whether Diablo runs until 2029-2030 or 2044-45, under proposed new NRC rules, the plant’s owner/operator will no longer be required to reduce radiation release to “as low as reasonable achievable,” and to some degree can decide how much radiation to expose us to.”

“There's also the ongoing dangerous situation at the shuttered San Onofre nuclear power station on the California coast, where highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel is precariously stored on the beach. Members of Congress, a former NRC chair, nuclear experts, and watchdog groups will grapple with that problem at a symposium at Scripps Institute next week.”

“Meanwhile Fukushima is still exposing Californians to radiation and will for decades to come. Now and for at least the next 40 years, radioactive waste from Fukushima’s spent nuclear fuel pools is being deliberately discharged into the Pacific Ocean. There have been several significant accidents at the site and far more radioactive wastewater has been released

into the Pacific than planned. And even in the deliberate releases, tritium and carbon-14 are

not being filtered at all, just dumped directly into the ocean. California Bluefin tuna, used for sushi and sashimi, take as little as 55 days to migrate across the Pacific, from northern Japan offshore of the Fukushima Prefecture to northern California.

“In 2013 the Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network and other groups filed a Citizen Petition with FDA flagging our concerns about radioactive contamination in tuna. So far, there has been no action on it.”

“The industry push to keep Diablo running, the dilemma of the radioactive waste on the beach at San Onofre, the laxity of existing regulations and the further rollback of radiation

protections in the proposed new NRC rules – they all affect public health and safety in California, and should be of concern to every Californian. The public comment period on the new NRC rule closes August 31. Anyone can read the rule and filecomments by visiting Regulations.gov and inputting DocketID: NRC-2025-1140.Comments on the proposed NRC rule can also be submitted to the Federal Register by August 31.”

Source: Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network https://nislappdc.org/fukushima-fallout/