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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week Tom Wheeler, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center or as we are better known in these parts, EPIC. And I am joined by my friend and colleague and cohost Jen Kalt of Humboldt Baykeeper. Hey Jen. And we are also joined by HSU assistant professor and member of the Sea Level Rise Initiative, Jen Marlow. Hey Jen. And Michael Welch, volunteer with Redwood Alliance and renewable energy enthusiast. Hey Michael. Hey, well, so today we are going to talk about the nuclear energy plant on on Humboldt Bay and and its decommissioning. Jen -- Kalt, that is -- would you set the stage for today's show?

JEN KALT:

Yeah. So okay, I will start off. The nuclear power plant at King Salmon was built in the mid sixties operated until the late seventies -- 76, did it shut down? Okay. It's been in the process of cooling off and then being decommissioned all these years since 1976. What we're left with in short is a nuclear waste site on the bluff above King Salmon. And that's what people are focusing on now is what will we do about that. But Michael can speak to some of the history which it gets told in different parts from different perspectives. And so it's great to have someone here who actually was in vain involved in all that way back when. So before we get into talking about the nuclear waste site and Jen Marlow's project working on the next phase of what do we do about this situation, Michael, why don't you tell us a little bit about the history and your involvement in the nuclear power plant situation back when it was still running and shutting it down and all that?

MICHAEL WELCH:

Sure. Yeah. As you mentioned, 1976 is when it shut down and shut down because nearby earthquake faults were discovered. Looking into that, they found a huge earthquake fault, It goes almost right underneath the power plant. So it became clear that that plant was never going to run again. PG&E didn't look at it that way for the longest time and actually started working on trying to upgrade the building and make it quote earthquake safe unquote. But it turned out that they just wasted that money and through efforts with the public utilities commission, we actually got all that money that they spent taken out of the rate base. So we didn't have to pay for that. Be jenny eight that won the fuel sat in a fuel pool for a long time for 20 some years. In 1976, the plant was shut down initially because they were doing a refueling of the plant and so they were right in the middle of moving the fuel around and they took essentially all the fuel out and put it in the spent fuel pool where it's been cooling, both temperature wise and radioactive wise until they took it out of the pool and moved it into dry cask storage and that's the way it is Now, all the irradiated or spent fuel is sitting on that bluff. It's pretty safe though. It's put into canisters. And then those canisters were put into shipping containers and then those shipping containers were lowered into a concrete and steel vault. That's on that bluff. I really can't think of anything that would disturb that in a way that would create danger for the community. It's really, really quite safe at this point.

That should catch us up on where we are with the history and what's going on with plant and the waste at this point.

KALT:

Yeah. And I'm really glad you talked about the safety of that underground storage site because people do get really upset and emotional talking about this because nuclear waste well, it's, it's powerful stuff. And, and people older than, well, people at least my age remember the Three Mile Island incident. And it's, you know, it's, it can be scary in part because it's hard to understand a lot of the science behind it is difficult to understand. And so I was fortunate to get a tour of that site. Well, the spent fuel pool was still being used. They had just taken most of the rods or maybe all of the rods out at that point. And it was just mind boggling to look down into that and tour that site looked down into the, to the reactor which was built underground total trip. But Jen, why don't you tell us about your project And now that we're caught up to more current times. Talk a little bit about what you're working on.

JEN MARLOW:

Thanks Jen, and thanks Michael to for for still being dedicated to this, this renewable energy advocacy and to understanding the future of the bay and to putting into context a long and complex history. It's important to consider sea level rise and the potential for shoreline erosion of the bluff. So currently there is a revetment wall, rip rap wall protecting the bluff between 18 70 1970 there was about 1400 ft of erosion of that bluff about 15 ft a year. And since that rip rap wall was installed in the fifties, it's really slowed down that pace of erosion. The question becomes, how can we protect that site from climate hazard from coastline erosion, from sea level rise in the future. So, the design of the Spc is, was thought out to be able to tolerate flood debris because of the concrete vault. It was designed to be fully submerged in over 600 ft of water. So it is, it is a concrete vault as mike was saying, I think the question is more the integrity of the site it's on and how we can understand the changes to that site in over time.

There's an extreme projection for two m of sea level rise by 2096. That would be supported by the Ocean Protection Council. And there's a high risk projection of two m of sea level rise by 2093 so We can look at, say the high risk projection as the stand this sort of assumed future projection that we need to be considerate of. Or we can look at the more extreme projection of 2m of sea level rise by 2076, which would be the most protective if we're looking at how we can evaluate the potential risks to bluff inundation of that site. So we're looking at say two ft of sea level rise by 2076 or a little bit more conservative 2093. And at the same time, we need to understand how that rip rap wall could be overtopped by sea level rise, especially during a king tide event. And if that rip rap wall was overtopped by these coastal hazards, what protection would it offer for that site? Essentially. It will be islanded by 2093. All of the areas around it will be submerged by water including King Salmon and the PG&E generating plant access roads. So with that visual, I think we need to really examine how are we going to protect the spc on that site with that coastal hazard very well understood as a future condition that we need to plan for.

KALT:

Yeah. And in case people are wondering esposito stands for independent spent fuel storage installation. That's a nuclear regulatory commission acronym, that we use a lot -- the ISFSI -- it sounds ridiculous, but it's a lot shorter than saying the whole name, right. And if people are curious if you're familiar with King Salmon, basically there's a trail that you can walk below the bluff, which P genie closes during king tides and big storms because it's dangerous. It's just at the base of a bluff. And if the waves get over the top of the riprap, there's nowhere to go. But theISFSI. Is on top of basically a sandstone bluff. That's about it's what 44 ft above sea level. And it's the town of King Salmon tsunami evacuation area. So if you were walk up that little trail, you're going right towards that nuclear waste storage site, which was always considered to be a short term storage site because the federal government has been promising a permanent repository since before I was born, I think it's safe to assume that that permanent repository for nuclear waste is never going to exist and that we're going to live with this forever. Or as long as the human imagination can can think of, which is fine. I mean, Michael and I have both talked about how important it is to keep it here and not not try to move it because of the dangers involved in trying to move it either by train or by barge or whatever, it would be very dangerous, very expensive. I kind of believe if you made it, you, you get to keep it and and we should all make decisions now with that in mind, with that, With that thought in mind. But What's important too is that when the embassy was built and permitted and back in way back in 2006, 15 years ago, people thought that the bluff was uplifting because they used the crescent city tide gauge to evaluate sea level rise potential for this area. And since then the local geologists and other experts have analyzed the situation and realized, no, there's nothing wrong with the norse bit tide gauge. It's actually that the ground beneath the bay is sinking at the same rate that sea level is rising. So while crescent city has, it has very little relative sea level rise going on because of that uplift. Humboldt Bay area has the fastest rate of relative sea level rise on the west coast.

WHEELER:

Hey, Kalt: Jen Marlow talked about king tides and the risk that king tides play and how they will have the most water, the highest water. Can you remind me what a king tide is? And I think that Humboldt Baykeeper is also studying these and maybe you could talk about you king tide project.

KALT:

Sure. King tides are just a catchy term for the highest tides of the year. So the annual extreme which tends to happen around the winter solstice either during the new moon or the full moon in december. When it's combined. Oftentimes with storms, lots of rain, low atmospheric pressure, all kinds of other local factors that go into it. So what Humboldt Baykeeper has been doing for 10 years now is mobilizing volunteers all around the Humboldt Bay area to take photographs during these king tides mostly showing man made features this. Just a couple of weeks ago we had a king tide where we focused on the old railroad tracks around the bay because of the absurd and dangerous proposal to bring coal here to Humboldt Bay to export to china. So we're looking at what it would take to rebuild the railroad line to support that kind of nastiness. But you can go on our website and see some of the photos and then the Coastal Commission has a California king tides project as well where you can look at king tide photos from all around the state of people are from San Diego or San Francisco bay area. There's a lot of amazing photos of waves crashing over the Embarcadero and whatnot. But we're doing it to basically get people thinking about what a regular high tide will look like with one ft of sea level rise because the king tide is generally about one ft higher than a typical monthly maximum as they call it monthly high tide. So you know, just thinking about these extremes and how they will change relative to the built environment relative to highway one oh one, the railroad tracks, the bridges and the nuclear waste storage site and other other important the sewage treatment plants are another very low lying important infrastructure piece that we need to think about relocating before, before very long.

WHEELER:

It's time to take a quick break. We'll be back with more Econews in just a moment. You're listening to the Econews Report, we're talking about the storage of spent nuclear waste on Humboldt Bay and the potential threat of sea level rise. Alright, so let's bring it back to Jen Marlow. So Jen, as I understand it, you're trying to facilitate a community dialogue about this. Can you, can you talk a little bit more about your project here?

MARLOW:

Sure, Tom, thanks. And what we're looking at is is really trying to face the uncertainties of unprecedented change on Humboldt Bay and to examine those infrastructures, critical infrastructure along the bay that may be impacted by these changes. And so the idea behind the project is to, as you suggest, facilitate a collaborative dialogue among members of our community who have been invested in Decommissioning the nuclear plant, who have a history of engagement on the issues members of our community, who will be directly impacted tribal nations who have been in virtue left out of the community dialogue that's gone on over the last several decades and try to invigorate a sense of empowerment. I think among our members of the communities so that we can understand what the potential risks are and to not throw up our hands and say, oh, this nuclear waste site is underground. We can't see it, it's out of our minds, we don't have to think about it. And to question that assumption and to say what values does our community have in inviting our own interests and values into the conversation to shape the future of decisions made about this site. So we're not trying to instill fear or conspiracies around future forecasting. But what we are doing is looking at credible future climate projections and scenarios to suggest that we need to be thinking future focused future forward and be thinking now about 2076 And the waste site license terminates in 2065. The life of the casks expires in 2068 sea level rise of 2m could be lapping at the wall by 2076. So instead of reacting to that in that moment, how can we face the future in an informed way that's driven by sound science, but also what community members want to know and what values they want to see reflected in decisions that are made and how local voices, tribal affected community members can be thinking as legitimate participants in in plans about the future of the site, not leaving it up, just to the government agencies not leaving it up to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to PG&E. Why don't we involve ourselves in helping imagine a safe bay and what steps we might need to take to be on a pathway for that.

KALT:

Yeah, it's really important that people pay attention to because we're paying for this, right? Michael alluded earlier to the genie trying to get the ratepayers to pay for seismic upgrades that we're never going to actually accomplish. What the goal. I don't know if you want to speak to that a little bit Michael, but if you're a P Giannini customer and you look at your bill, it says Decommissioning fund at the bottom and we're all paying into that and it's very expensive to maintain the ecstasy and guard it and all the things that go on there and whatever happens, whatever is done, whatever the plan is, will be paying for that too.

WELCH:

The Decommissioning and the and the SP site cost about a billion dollars. The annual cost from now until the SV is gone, is about a million dollars a year. So it's, it's not cheap.

WHEELER:

So Jen Marlow, you talked about how, how this is a long term visioning future and how we need to have a conversation as Humboldt Bay residents about the future that we want to see who is in charge of this site that we are going to try to engage with, what government agencies will be regulating the installation of more riprap, perhaps maintenance of of this particular parcel itself. What what who, who are we going to need to communicate with? Thanks tom

MARLOW:

a lot of the questions we're asking is who is legally responsible, which is not clear as is a general pattern and adaptation planning is that there's a lot of finger pointing, but there's a lot of coordination that needs to happen among responsible agencies for their particular part. You can kinda unbundle it, but you can imagine the coastal reinforcement being considered by the US Army Corps of Engineers currently PG&E maintains the riprap wall. But whether they will continue to do that is I think a question and how long they'll continue to do that, especially if the license expires or are they going to continue to maintain the site. There's the Nuclear regulatory Commission which oversees the spent nuclear waste license, which is the only license now that PG&E holds to that site. Since that the plant was officially decommissioned. There is the Department of Energy that holds legal title to the waste according to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. There are also many other, there's the Coastal Commission which has jurisdiction over permitting coastal development that would have to permit any kind of wall that would be built there. There's a harbor District which has jurisdiction over the tide lands in the bay. There's the Coast Guard which would have to be involved in any kind of emergency accident response plan, including the Fire district. There are many more agencies. I'm not saying the fish and Wildlife Service which has jurisdiction over the wildlife that that is sustained by that

WHEELER:

county county? The city of Eureka. It's not within the city but it's within the sphere of influence of of the city. So

MARLOW:

King Salmon and operated next door. The school district which has a South Bay Elementary school very close to the, to the facility. So it's part of our work is trying to build this universe of of responsible and integrated actors and try to convene them for a series of scenario planning workshops where we're going to examine credible science based future projection scenarios and then go through essentially a Socratic exercisable. Okay, what are we gonna do if this scenario is to unfold? And we're not looking at one scenario or one version of the official future but multiple potential futures. Multiple official futures because we can't predict what is going to happen with with the repository. As Jen already mentioned, we don't know. It's very unlikely seeming that there will be a federal repository. The biden administration is now looking at interim storage sites and is starting a process of requesting voluntary consent of communities to host interim storage, which is an interesting term in this context. Interim storage. I don't know how interim these storage sites really are, even if they're labeled as such. So there's a lot of uncertainty from a policy perspective, we're looking at some uncertainties around. Are we going to have a cascadia subduction zone, earthquake and when and what would that? How would a tsunami event impact the rip rap wall? I mean, we understand from recent tsunami projections that the crew edible highest tsunami at a high tide would be 43 ft. The spc site will be high and dry, you know, with one ft of differential. However, what happens to that rip rap wall during a tsunami event? That rip rap wall is not above sea level, It's what's protecting that site from erosion. And we need to think about this.

KALT:

And it's not just as simple as building a seawall or something like that, which a lot of people just think, well why not just build a big concrete wall? Because what that often results in is just even more erosion in front of the wall. And so it may make sense in the short term, but if you look at what really the long term effects of seawalls are, it's not gonna help that much, it may be better to keep the riprap and just keep rearranging it. I do want to say that there is uncertainty around PG&E as we all know that has been through bankruptcy proceedings. And is, there's a lot of, a lot to say about that that I don't have to get into, I'm sure, but how about Baykeeper joined the community advisory board in 2013. But Michael and Mike Minutos and Dave Meserve and a whole bunch of other people were on the community advisory board throughout the entire decommissioning process. And we're working to keep the community advisory board going to address what comes next rather than okay, the decommissioning is done and PG&E can just walk away and turn to decommissioning the Diablo Canyon plant now. And so PG&E I think Michael would be better to speak to this than I would because of his long term work on the cab. But the cab members were very successful and PG&E somewhat receptive to making a much better site that they're walking away from now. They decommissioned it in a way that went above and beyond because the people who were on the cab insisted that it be done much more thoroughly than what was originally planned. Is that right, Michael?

WELCH:

That's a good way to put it. I think the cab is very successful in that regard and really we got everything that we wanted out of the process and I think that yes, we need to keep the cab going so that we can address issues like sea level rise and the potential for moving the waste in the future and that sort of thing I wanted to add to jennifer Marlow's list of organizations, the California public utilities commission, which probably ultimately would be where PG&E would have to go to get the money to make any changes at the plant site. But yeah, very important,

KALT:

very powerful and far away agency to us here in Humboldt And just check it out. It's, it's gonna be really interesting to see how this unfolds over the next 10 2030 years, we should all be involved in the future planning for this because we know it's coming, whether it's coming in 2050, 2060, 2075, whatever we know what's coming and we need to plan for it because if we don't, it will be a lot worse.

WHEELER:

Michael if folks want to learn more about Redwood Alliance or the history of this plant or anything that you'd like to direct people to, where should they go?

WELCH:

Well, unfortunately Redwood Alliance now that the Decommissioning is over with Redwood alliance is pretty much winding down and I can see the end of it in the future, although I might personally fully intend to keep being involved in the cab and any other efforts around the new plant and around renewable energy in our community. But I I can't really give you any resources above and beyond what the others are going to offer.

WHEELER:

All right, Jen Marlow, where should people go to learn more information

MARLOW:

to learn more Information about our convening of community-based collaborative process around future planning for the spent fuel. They can go to 44ft above sea level.com. It's 40 for the number and my contact information is listed at the bottom of that page.

WHEELER:

Well,

KALT:

if people want to learn more about the nuclear power plant, the Decommissioning in the history, the 44 ft website has a ton of great information to it is a really, really interesting resource. Lots of photos from Mike from some of the tours that we had during the Decommissioning. And it's just, it's fascinating. Just a glimpse into a past era of kind of stunning arrogance that people thought that they could just put a nuclear power plant in a community like this right next to Humboldt Bay, right across from the entrance of the bay and it would just be there forever. And we would never have to worry about it again. I mean it just, it's mind boggling and it gives you a perspective about some of the things we believe are good ideas today and say,

WHEELER:

all right, thanks gang.

MARLOW:

That

KALT:

was great.

WELCH:

Yeah,

WHEELER:

enjoy your time off. Well, on that note, we'll end today's show. This has been the Econews Report. Join us again next week on this time and channel for more environmental news from the North Coast of California