They are up and down the coast from the bottom of California through the top of Washington. However, I am going to limit this post to the one I am most familiar with, El Diablo here in San Luis Obispo County. You can read about it on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon... ) but my main emphasis is that it's built in a canyon right behind the beachfront to begin with. It's built to withstand a maximum 7.5 magnitude earthquake.



We here in California live in the land of earthquake faults and the mother of them all is the San Andreas fault. Now, there have been predictions for as long as I have been alive, and that is 70+ years, that there is up to a 10 magnitude earthquake in the wings some day for this fault to slip and slide. So when this plant was built, they conveniently whitewashed the danger that this plant is sitting within whistling distance of the Hosgri fault and yes, the San Andreas fault.

So it's really not a matter of if there is going to be a huge magnitude earthquake but when. Of course why should you guys inland and in the heartland really worry about a bunch of wine drinking, flakey Californians? Of course, we at ground zero of a huge earthquake, tsunami and nuclear melt down, are toast anyway and it has nothing to do you guys or does it? Just, look at your weather graphics every night. Note that all the wind and storm patterns come from the west and travel east, all the way to Kansas. Radioactive fall out will travel a long distance across the continent.

Now many of us have been trying to get these plants decommissioned for a very long time and we almost accomplished it when Enron came along and created the energy crisis in California that got Governor Gray Davis recalled. (Very convenient for the Republicans who did it). So the plants were powered up again. But the danger is still there and it seems it isn't enough for those of us who are sitting on this powder keg to try to get the attention of our politicians to do something about this. It is going to take the entire nation because as they say, as California goes so goes the nation. This would be a terrible way for the nation to go, IMHO.