Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant: The WikiBook/Introduction

The nuclear incident at the Fukushima Diaichi nuclear station has sparked a renewed interest in evaluation of the risks posed by nuclear power plants worldwide, among them Diablo. (Some parties insist on referring to the plant as Diablo Canyon (Nuclear) Power Plant; consistent with our neutral point of view policy, we try to steer clear of that debate as much as possible, referring to the facility as "Diablo", the "plant" and so forth). As you can read in the Diablo Canyon Power Plant chapter, it was built in close proximity to numerous earthquake fault zones, and is a source of on-going, often heated, public policy debate.

According to Wikipedia, Diablo Canyon was originally designed to withstand a 6.75 magnitude earthquake, including the nearby San Andreas fault|San Andreas and Hosgri faults, but was later upgraded to withstand a 7.5 magnitude quake. Recent public disclosure of the existence of the Shoreline fault proximal to DC(N)PP has created renewed public interest in the current ongoing re-licensing application of DCPP, including calls for a suspension of the licensing process until the seismic studies are complete. Although the plant has redundant seismic monitoring and a safety system designed to shut it down promptly in the event of significant ground motion, there remains considerable public concern about safety.