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JENNIFER KALT:

Welcome to the EcoNews Report. I'm your host this week, Jennifer Kalt, and this is my first show as the Executive Director of what is now known as Humboldt Waterkeeper, and you can read more about that change on our website, humboldtwaterkeeper.org. Today, my guests are Jen Marlow, who is Assistant Professor at Cal Poly Humboldt and the founder of the 44 Feet Project, and Alec Brown, who is a Graduate Research Assistant and also part of the 44 Feet Project team. So thanks so much for joining us today.

ALEC BROWN:

Thank you for having us.

KALT:

Before we get into what has to do with the nuclear waste storage site, there's a few news items related to Humboldt Bay. One of the big ones is that on October 5th, the Regional Water Board approved the Ocean Discharge Permit, known as the NPDES permit, for Nordic Aquafarms, the fish factory that's being proposed at the former pulp mill. Now their plan is to raise yellowtail kingfish, which is what you would get in a restaurant called hamachi. The Regional Board approved this permit and we were able to get some positive changes, especially in the effluent monitoring and the ocean monitoring where the discharge is going to a mile offshore where the pulp mill discharge pipe is located. The next step for this project is a Coastal Commission hearing, it might be mid-November but we'll keep you posted, check our website or you can sign up for our action alerts by sending an email to alerts at humboldtwaterkeeper.org.

The other big really great news, we have been advocating for Senate Bill 704 to be approved by the legislature and it was in fact signed by the Governor at the end of September. This bill closes a loophole for offshore oil and gas support facilities. It's this loophole that was in the Coastal Act since the Coastal Act was written in 1976. It has been a threat hanging over the entire coast of California, but particularly Humboldt Bay for all these years. Basically streamlined and prioritized a lot of coastal lands that are zoned for coastal dependent industry, of which there's about 1800 acres around Humboldt Bay. It prioritized pipelines, refineries and things like the liquefied natural gas facility that was proposed here on the Samoa Peninsula back in 2003 and that is what actually led to the formation of Humboldt Baykeeper. That loophole has been closed and it's a huge relief to a lot of people living along all kinds of coastal areas of California. It also added offshore wind energy support facilities like the wind terminal that's being proposed here in Humboldt Bay as an allowable use, but it doesn't allow any kind of exemptions from protecting coastal resources. It's just another part of our transition from fossil fuel reliance to renewable energy.

One of the main reasons that this is important for the Humboldt Bay area is of course sea level rise and the three of us are part of the Cal Poly Humboldt's Sea Level Rise Institute and that leads me to the 44 Feet Project. Jen, why don't you give us a little brief background for people who have not heard of the 44 Feet Project and what the reason that you've been studying it.

JEN MARLOW:

Yeah, so the 44 FeetPproject is a coalition of folks here in the Humboldt region, tribes, community members, scientists, students, faculty at Cal Poly Humboldt, agency staffers, industry experts, nonprofit collaborative folks, all trying to understand long-term implications of climate and coastal hazards to Humboldt Bay's spent nuclear fuel site, Buhne Point, just next to King Salmon. And our biggest questions are whether or not there's credible assumptions that are the basis for PG&E's assertion that climate and coastal hazard risks are negligible. We are working to understand those risks better, not only as scientists and those interested in objective evaluation of safety at the site, but even thinking of the word negligible, which is like so small to be insignificant or trifling. There's an incommensurate characterization of risk at the site as negligible.

Potentially there is limited or low risk, but there's high impact of a potential breach of safety at this event that is related to ongoing and documented erosion. The site is located on one of the most dynamically erosive sections of Humboldt Bay, which is experiencing the fastest pace of relative sea level rise on the West Coast. There's potential for magnitude nine Cascadia earthquakes and tsunamis resultant from that. Our consideration is whether the site is safeguarded in light of increasing hazards with respect to ongoing climate change and whether or not the safety reporting asserting safety is really factoring in the best available science and the most updated sea level rise guidance, as well as the values and considerations and concerns and interests of the Humboldt Bay community.

So we started the 44 feet project as a project of the Humboldt Bay Sea Level Rise Institute as a way of understanding and advocating for community involvement and site safety assessment. Also vigilance from our governments, at least at the local level around how to incorporate the long-term safety responsibility and management of the site into the long-term plans for Humboldt Bay. Alec, do you want to talk a little bit about where the site is and a little share something about its characteristics?

BROWN:

Sure, I'd be happy to. So maybe a bit of a brief history. A bluff on Humboldt Bay's Buhne Point near the community of King Salmon was once home to one of the nation's oldest nuclear power plants, owned and operated by PG&E. It began operations in 1963. In 1976, the plant was shut down for routine refueling. There was also incoming science around seismic hazards in the bay. So there was going to be a seismic retrofit that needed to take place around that time. The nation was still reeling from the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania during this time as well. This event essentially prompted new safety regulations, which required upgrades to all sites across the United States.

For the Humboldt Bay, the nuclear power plant, they were deemed to be cost prohibitive. And so PG&E permanently defueled the reactor in 1984. Just a few years ago, the site is completely restored to a fraction of its former footprint, really. It's now equipped with a natural gas generating station. The only remnants of the 13 years of nuclear energy generation on Buhne Point are in the form of six dry storage casks, which encases 37 tons of what we call spent nuclear fuel in a below-grade concrete vault. So as the science is updated, as we saw in the late 70s, early 80s, we started to see the influence of tectonic plates and seismic forces, and that shuttered the site initially. Those hazards haven't gone away. And that's kind of one of the major questions is, is this site designed and engineered with the capacity to withstand some of these major forces, like a 9.0 magnitude earthquake?

PG&E and their contractors that they do some of these analyses with have estimated that it can withstand an 8.8 magnitude, for example. But we're sort of questioning that assumption, and I think it's valid. Perhaps it is safe against both. It's just, we're trying to figure that out with the best available science and with the best available minds locally, regionally, federally. It's really a partnership to try to build knowledge and understanding of the risks involved. There's also sea level rise two to three times higher than the rest of the United States West Coast, which will essentially exacerbate all of these other risks, right? We're dealing with sea level rise, but that also reflects increased and accelerated erosion of the bluff. It would increase the height of a tsunami, which right now is only being tempered against what they would consider a 43-foot-high tsunami, which is conveniently one foot lower than the elevation of the bluff right now, which is 44 feet.

So that's one thing that we're considering as well. There are so many biophysical factors that we need consideration of, but then I think we're also combining our understanding of those biophysical risks with sort of the social, the cultural, the political dimensions of this community on the ground, because those things are so important to understanding the capacity to adapt or to influence decisions or to, at the very least, understand what we can do, how we could react in the case of a nuclear exposure event. I think it's sort of combining the risk analyses with the social and human dimensions to try to understand risk and situate it in this local.

KALT:

Yeah, thanks for that background. I believe it was the first commercial nuclear power plant in California. Maybe it was the second in the US. At that time when it was built, there wasn't a lot known about earthquake faults in the region and the PG&E actually invested a lot in studies that looked at earthquake faults in the area. And I noticed Humboldt Waterkeeper had a seat on the community advisory board during a lot of the decommissioning process, not all of it, but I noticed one of the faults is called Discharge Canal Fault. I imagine that's because it wasn't named until after the Discharge Canal was built. So, this plant used to take in, I'm not sure how many gallons of water a day for cooling and then discharge it back into the bay. So, now that discharge canal has been remediated as well. The fact that plate tectonics even was probably not entirely considered settled science.

It's really mind-boggling to think about. But then fast forward to 2006 when the Coastal Commission approved the permit to build this underground storage facility. It was thought at that time that the bluff was uplifting at the same rate as sea level was rising. Since then, scientists here come to understand that actually our region is sinking at about the same rate that sea level is rising. So, that's why we have two to three times the relative sea level rise rate as the rest of the West Coast. I'm so grateful to both of you for working on this issue because it's very complex science on so many levels and then the policy aspects of it are really complex as well and not so easy to access for the average person, to put it mildly.

MARLOW:

Yeah, and I think it's important, Jen, to also note the California Coastal Commission's license is to the facility in perpetuity. That is unique for Humboldt Bay. Other licenses of other espaces in California aren't so locked in. So we have a perpetually licensed facility on a bluff. With foresight, no one would have ever installed this kind of storage site there had they known of the potential risks. But it is there, and it is licensed in perpetuity, and it is inconsistent with the Coastal Act. But there is no alternative. We have this problem of stranded fuel in states around the United States where you have espaces or spent nuclear fuel sites that are stored on sites of formerly decommissioned nuclear power plants. And so you don't have a spent fuel pool should there ever be an incident where there needs to be cooling of the fuel if there was ever a rupture.

There's really no contingency. We have a cask transporter to remove the waste from the vault located in Diablo Canyon, 10-hour drive away. So we have not only stranded fuel, we also have Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations. The scope of those authorities over independent fuel installations is much smaller than the NRC had scope of review over an operating nuclear power plant. So there's a limited oversight by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over these stranded fuel sites, not to say that there isn't any oversight. There's just drawn back oversight, different licensing arrangements for these decommissioned sites, assuming they are safe. And we have had a really impressive record of safety at spent nuclear fuel storage sites.

And we're not trying to question that or be alarmist or hysterical about this. But with climate change, it beckons us forward toward the future and thinking about how can we, knowing that this storage site is inconsistent with the California Coastal Act, knowing that there's limited NRC oversight, knowing that there's climate change impacts that we're learning more about. How do we safeguard the site in the future? And how do we enlist the expertise of those around the Bay in supporting those considerations and helping in partnership inform how the site is managed in the future? One of the biggest questions of 44 feet was should the waste be relocated or removed off of the bluff site? Knowing that the risks going forward, even if there's a small probability of exposure event, there's a high impact.

And so there's, I think, a non-negligible question, a reasonable, prudent question. Do we think about whether this waste belongs on this bluff over the long term? Is their budget enough to safeguard against the potential risks in PG&E's decommissioning budget? Do we have the protections we need in order to maintain protection in place over the short term and to investigate the potential need in the long term to remove the waste from this precarious bluff? Should there need to be preemptive action taken to make sure that the Bay and the communities and all of the non-human species that are home here are safe in the long term?

So these are some of the biggest questions that 44 Feet is trying to address. We don't pretend to be able to predict the future, but we are really interested in alternative futures beyond the official future, which is the risk is negligible. We're interested in exploring possible futures that suggest that maybe the risk in some instances may not be negligible. And if that is the case, and if we learn more about those risks and it is determined, then we have contingencies or plans of action to safeguard against those risks going forward. Thank you.

KALT:

The Econews Report. Today we're talking with Jen Marlow, assistant professor at Cal Poly Humboldt and founder of the 44 Feet Project, and Alec Brown, graduate research assistant. A lot of times people ask, well, what about the federal nuclear repository that's been promised since, oh, probably since before this power plant was built? What's the latest on that, do you know?

BROWN:

This has been something that I'm really interested in because I think that we can't just examine Humboldt Bay's situation in a vacuum. We have to situate it in the larger policy realm and the politics of the nation with regard to spent nuclear fuel disposition. The laws were written in the 80s. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, for example, essentially mandates that the Department of Energy would retrieve and dispose of the nation's waste beginning in 1998. So here we are 25 years later, that prudent standard has been neglected for reasons of political antagonism and certain issues, technical, political, social, surrounding the waste site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. We have this, at one point, this movement to remove all the waste and place it somewhere, which is not going to be Yucca Mountain anymore. That's no longer a viable option.

Yet the industry, I would say at large, has this timeline in mind that the Department of Energy will start retrieving the waste from at least 14 of the first shutdown sites, Humboldt Bay included, by the year 2032. That kind of factors into what Jen Marlow is talking about with regard to, we have these timelines that are sort of conflicting because the California Coastal Commission has licensed this site in perpetuity. But the industry is saying, look, in 10 years, it's going to be taken care of. So let's not be hasty in any decisions to make adaptations or to protect the site more than it has to be. I think that that 2032 date is just speculative at this point. It's been speculative since 1998, when the federal government's job has not been completed.

That's just such an interesting side note and something we have to consider. The federal preemption really limits our ability to engage and influence the direction of management over this waste site, as it does for all the 84 other sites across the nation, because of the fact that the federal government has complete control over all aspects of safety and regulation. That leaves us with limited constraint. We can do certain things, and we have actually. It's been really profound, but I think that it's been interesting because we're limited. We can only do so much at the local level, and I think that's a big part of our ideal theoretical contribution to this is how do we expand federal oversight to start recognizing the localized issues? For instance, if this site is no longer viable in the future, 20, 30, 40 years from now, is there an out for us? Is there a way for us to influence the direction? If it's not going to go to a permanent home, can we get it somewhere in Humboldt County where it will be safe from sea level rise and tectonics and seismic forces and the like? Just such an interesting thought experiment that we're engaging with right now.

KALT:

Well, in the meantime, PG&E recently announced a tsunami hazard assessment. Can you talk a little bit about that, Jen, and how that came about? I know that you were involved in commenting on the.

MARLOW:

The Nuclear Decommissioning Cost Triennial Proceeding, which looks at the budget PG&E has to work with from the Decommissioning Trust Fund to maintain the spent nuclear fuel site until the projected removal date by the Department of Energy in 2032, which as Alec just mentioned, is speculative and so questions how much budget do we need actually to make sure that the site will be safe in perpetuity, the timelines aren't necessarily synchronous. But as part of the proceeding, there can be intervenors and parties to the California Public Utility Commission proceedings which look at those budgets and provide public opportunity for comment. In the proceeding, in the most recent 2021 proceeding, there was an organization called A4NR, Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, that in its proceeding noted some of the deficiencies, of PG&E's sea level rise and tsunami analysis, noting that the methodologies and the data were in some cases decades old, upon which safety assumptions were based. And so the contestation or the claim was that the budget isn't commensurate with the needs to assess ongoing coastal and climate risk to the site.

And so as part of that proceeding in the settlement, the final decision included a provision which actually requires PG&E is agreeing to perform an updated tsunami hazard assessment for the Humboldt Bay Spent Nuclear Fuel Site that incorporates the most current information about sea level rise and tsunamigenic earthquakes. And they're using a similar analysis performed for the Song's Spent Nuclear Fuel Site as a benchmark for that. And 44 Feet commented on that initial proposal for this study and certainly support it. And one of the other comments we made was that certainly this kind of study should be also understanding convergent risks so that as this maximum credible tsunami height is understood, it's understood in light of projected sea level rise impacts as well. I think one of our longer term goals with 44 Feet might be to have an independent scientific and ethics advisory council that informs, say, the governor of California or the governor's office of how the state of California might have more agency in directing the future of its spent nuclear fuel on its coastal bluffs or on its coastal sites.

And I think part of the really exciting work going on at the California Public Utility Commission is just that it's a way in which the public can understand how to intervene in the safety assessment in a sense and require that ratepayer funds be utilized to support investigation into the site safety and that the budget is commensurately updated to reflect the needs going forward as the site is susceptible to ongoing change. How does the budget need to reflect that? I think that's one of the ways we've been able to exercise some influence at the state level with respect to really compelling PG&E's involvement as the operator of this facility and certainly it will protect PG&E's assets as well. So it does appear to be a mutually beneficial outcome. But I think at the same time, we haven't had as much influence over the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Although I think that in due time, this is something to spent nuclear fuel sites around the country will need to be programmatically assessed at that federal level. But at least at the state level, we can make some inroads with these cost proceedings and understand how can we use these processes that are designed for public engagement to influence public decision making and process around the future management of this particular site. When at the federal level, public participation has been essentially designed out of the management of spent nuclear fuel, given the technical and expert driven structure of nuclear management in the United States.

So that's one exciting development and it will be available for the 2024 Nuclear Decommissioning Cost Triennial Proceedings. So we expect that PG&E's updated tsunami study will be available in December 2024.

KALT:

That is great news because I've spoken with some people in King Salmon and I think it's just out of sight, out of mind, but people think about it and wonder, well, after an earthquake is someone monitoring to make sure everything's okay? And how do we know anything about what's going on there? So what's really interesting is in June, the Humboldt County Grand Jury issued a report on emergency preparedness called Ready or Not. It focused heavily on this independent spent fuel storage installation, as we call it, the ISFSI, at King Salmon, and I wondered if you can speak to that and what changes we hope to see in the emergency response or monitoring after an emergency to ensure public safety.

BROWN:

That is another area where we've had that local influence. Like Jen Marlow was saying, it's hard to influence the national federal regulatory realm. But at the very least, we've had some influence on development of emergency planning, which we had found at the beginning stages of our research was insufficient. Luckily, and fortuitously, the Humboldt County civil grand jury also found the same findings. So that's really good news. And this is in light of the fact that PG&E and the NRC maintain that there are no postulated accidents at the asphyxia that could result in the release of radioactive materials. So it doesn't require the implementation of protective actions.

And I think that's just such a shortfall, because why not have some emergency preparedness in place in the off chance that something does happen. The Humboldt County civil grand jury recognizes that and they released these recommendations, among others, to look explicitly at the independent spent fuel storage installation, given that the only reference in the county's emergency operation plan is to call PG&E. So it's certainly insufficient in that way. And this hopefully will close that loophole or at least give a little bit more transparency and better planning with the sheriff's office, for example, maybe the US Coast Guard can play a major role in this. And just so that people understand the true reality of risks and that we aren't waiting for something to happen. We have a plan in place. That's really good news. The Board of Supervisors is still considering which of these recommendations to pass. It's really good news and it's going in the right direction.

MARLOW:

Maybe I can just read the finding. It notes that the Humboldt County officials take PG&E's assertions regarding the safety of the independent spent fuel storage installation at base value. There is no independent spent fuel storage installation component or business plan included in the county's 2015 emergency operations plan. This omission may lead to a delay in emergency responses and hazard mitigation. So I think that's the finding and the civil grand jury did find that 2015 emergency operations plan hasn't really been updated on multiple levels. So it's not only the spent nuclear fuel installation that needs to be integrated, there's lots of other considerations in the findings. But I think the recommendation is that specifically the sheriff direct the Humboldt County Office of Emergency Services to include a completely updated Humboldt County emergency operations plan that includes an annex or contingency plan addressing any independent spent fuel storage installation related emergencies by no later than December 31st, 2024. So in that regard, the recommendation would be in the very short term future, there should be some action taken to recognize the potential for some potential risk and to have a safeguarded plan in place to mitigate or slow any potential hazard that could result from that.

KALT:

Yeah, this is actually something that people should really pay attention to and not let it just get in the received and file pile. The emergency response generally is concerning, for sure. But I wondered if there's anything else you want to talk about, or where can people go for more information?

MARLOW:

The best place to go for information is our website, which is 44feetproject.com. The website has information about the project, about us, and some resources that we've compiled over the last several years documenting our approaches and some of our focus group findings and the ideas and concerns of our constituents and those participating in the project. It also has a list of calendar events that we've participated in or that are upcoming and then our contact information, as well as a little archive of the history of Booner Point and the installation of the site, as well as the decommissioning project that was really stewarded so beautifully really by Humboldt Bay residents and groups. And so the last thing I wanted to say is just to share tremendous gratitude for the folks that preceded us in a lot of this. We're just being passed the torch and by no means do we deserve any special credit. I think we're just trying to honor the work of those that have gone before and working toward a collaboration and a partnership that achieves results that are really aligned with the values of Humboldt Bay and the future of the Bay. Just to say thanks to those who guided our way and those that are making sea level rise science and other coastal hazard science accessible and bringing that to the public's attention so that it can be used to inform policy making and decision making going forward.

KALT:

Well, and I am really grateful to all of those folks who came before and also to you for picking up the torch and carrying it forward, because a lot of this could easily just go into the long-term history archives and be forgotten. And it's just so important, so difficult to keep up on the policy and opportunities for public input, really. I mean, a lot of environmental issues have become so complex that it's not easy for the average person to engage. But the nuclear power, the regulatory system, and the science is all probably a hundredfold. You need to really be an expert in that particular field. It's really complex. I found it incredibly challenging. So I'm so grateful that the 44 Feet Project has taken this up and is working on it. So thank you both so much for joining me today. We'll post a bunch of show notes on the podcast, and this show will also appear on the Lost Coast Outpost when it airs, so people can go and find the Grand Jury Report and other important documents if they're interested in having a look at that.

All right, thank you so much And this has been another issue of the Econews Report. Join us again on this time and channel next week for more environmental news from the north coast of California.