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Object Description
| Title | A-Plant opponents charge false PG&E testimony |
| Type of object | Article - The Press Democrat |
| Subject |
Nuclear power plants Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) Bodega Bay (Calif.) Bodega Head (Calif.) |
| Region | Sonoma County (California) |
| Original source | Press Democrat |
| Place of publication/Origin | Santa Rosa, California |
| Date created | 1963-05-06 |
| Location ID | es001-01-010 |
| Source collection | Ernestine Smith Papers |
| Digital collection | Environmental History Digital Collection |
| Repository | Sonoma State University Library, Rohnert Park, California |
| Copyright | Restrictions may apply. For more information see http://library.sonoma.edu/specialcollections/usingcollections/rights/ |
| Transcript | THE PRESS DEMOCRAT The Redwood Empire’s Leading Newspaper SANTA ROSA, CALIFORNIA - The City Designed for Living - MONDAY AFTERNOON, MAY 6, 1963 -Staff Photo by John LeBaron PG&E EXCAVATION ON BODEGA HEAD-PLANT SITE IN BACKGROUND A-Plant Foes Say PG&E Gave ‘False Testimony’ A-Plant Opponents Charge False PG&E Testimony (Special to The Press Democrat) SAN FRANCISCO-The group opposing Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s Bodega power plant proposal today charged that the utility gave false testimony to the Public Utilities Commission and submitted altered documents to the Atomic Energy Commission. A lengthy document filed today with the PUC details the charges and asks the PUC to withdraw its approval of the plant and reopen public hearing on the PG&E application. The memo, filed by the Northern California Association to Preserve Bodega Head & Harbor, is aimed at the quality of foundation material under the site proposed for the nuclear reactor that would power the 325,000-kilowatt generating plant. It attempts to prove: 1-PG&E testified at PUC hearing that the San Andreas fault is more than a quarter-mile from the reactor site while knowing that it was less than that. 2-Foundation borings show there is no solid rock at the reactor site. 3-Reports of PG&E’s earthquake hazard consultants showed the site to be so unsuitable that PG&E tried to “suppress” the reports, altered some of their conclusions and failed to tell the AEC about the “most recent and damaging information.” 4-The association brought in an un-named outside expert who found evidence of “an active earthquake fault right through the proposed reactor site.” The association says its charges are based on two documents: An earthquake hazards report the utility submitted to the PUC after close of hearings last spring (which the association says the PUC didn’t read closely) and PG&E’s summary of hazards, submitted to the AEC. A PG&E spokesman today said the company hadn’t seen a copy of the document filed this morning with the PUC, and couldn’t comment on it until it had been studied. However, the spokesman said, all its information on the site indicates “there has been no rock faulting or shearing of the rock at the reactor site for thousands of years.” The earthquake report was ordered as a late-filed exhibit at the close of PUC hearings last spring. David Pesonen, executive secretary of the association, said the commission “appears to have relied on a summary of the exhibit prepared by PG&E’s engineers - without looking at the actual reports.” He also said conclusions of Dr. Don Tocher, University of California seismologist, “have been altered in PG&E’s report to the AEC to make the site look more suitable than Dr. Tocher said it was.” The memorandum discusses three reports on the Bodega foundations by the firm of Dames & Moore, San Francisco, which it says produced less favorable results. The last, Mr. Pesonen said, “indicated that a quirk of geology had created the ‘case of the missing layer (of rock). The last report was made available to PG&E while the hearings were in progress, he said, when a “fierce momentum” had built up behind the project. The memorandum says PG&E then had two “unsavory alternative alternatives,” that of pulling out and admitting “a gross error in planning” or proceeding “on the expectation that the error would lie undiscovered.” Proof of the choice, says the memorandum, is PG&E’s application to the AEC for permission to build the plant. The memorandum asks the PUC to re-open hearings in light of the late - filed exhibit, evidence based on the PG&E submissions to the AEC, the association’s “unqualified assurance that knew and related evidence can be brought to bear on this matter by experts with credentials of world authority in seismology and geology,” and “the grave and unprecedented consequences to the public safety, convenience and necessity which would ensue from an error in judgment on this matter.” The memorandum deals at length with the quality of the material expected under the plant, quoting PG&E several times in testimony to the effect that it would be “solid rock.” It also quotes from the detailed reports in the late-filed exhibit, attempting to show that in fact the bedrock at the site slopes sharply under the reactor and broken into relatively small pieces, making it of poor quality. Conditional Approval PG&E’s plans for the reactor have received a conditional approval from the AEC’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards. In approving the plans, the committee said “tentative exploration indicates that the reactor and turbine buildings will not be located on an active fault line.” If “this point is established,” the committee report said, “the design criteria for the plant are adequate from the standpoint of hazards as- (Continued on Page 6, Col. 4) False PG&E Testimony, Plant Opponents Say (Continued from Page 1) sociated with earthquakes. Careful examination of the quartz-diorite rock below should be made during building excavation, to confirm this point.” It also noted that the reactor and associated turbine building “are to be anchored in different geological formations,” and suggested attention during design to possible consequences of “violent earth shocks.” PG&E’s statements to the AEC about the plant site show “discrepancies” with the late-filed report submitted to the PUC, says the memorandum, in several respects. Those discrepancies, it says, include: -Language of a report of Dr. Tocher was “altered to give the impression of more favorable conditions that would have been suggested by the original version of the conclusions before the 1962 report of Dames & Moore confirmed the worst possible fears about the site.” -Failure of PG&E to submit to the AEC any of the Dames & Moore report. Where’s the Fault? The memorandum also deals at some length with the question of the distance from the San Andreas fault to the plant site. It says maps and photographs produce a distance of “very close to 1,000 feet” from the western edge of the fault zone (which crosses the headlands) to the reactor. And it then cites the PUC’s opinion on the application which says the records show the fault zone is “more than one-fourth of a mile east of the proposed reactor site,” and from the transcript of the PUC hearings in which PG&E witnesses said roughly the same thing. The information given the AEC, says the memorandum, was that the distance was “approximately 1,000 feet.” A quarter-mile is 1,320 feet. The memorandum also quotes from AEC siting regulations which say reactors should not be located closer than a quarter-mile from a known active fault; the AEC, however, said those regulations are merely guidelines and aren’t hard-and-fast rules. Future Earthquakes On the subject of possible future earthquakes at the site, the memorandum cites excerpts from reports submitted by PG&E to mean that there “is no evidence of large faults at the site-but there may be smaller faults; the likelihood of ground movement at the site is ‘probably quite small;’ the evidence ‘does not guarantee’ that there will be no movements at the site; but there is a ‘strong likelihood’ of active movement ‘near the site’.” |
| Digital reproduction | Original document scanned at 400 dpi-Displayed in Adobe pdf format at 400 dpi |
| Date digitized | 9/13/2010 |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Repository | Sonoma State University Library, Rohnert Park, California |
| Copyright | Restrictions may apply. For more information see http://library.sonoma.edu/specialcollections/usingcollections/rights/ |