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KPFA Weekend News Anchor Anthony Fest: California has two operating nuclear power plants, San Onofre in Orange County, and PG&E's Diablo Canyon Plant in San Luis Obispo County, on the Central Coast.   Both are on the coastline and both are built near earthquake faults.  State Senator Alex Padilla has called for a special hearing at the State capitol on April 14 to examine the risks the two aging plants might pose.  KPFA's Ann Garrison has the story. PG&E's Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant on the California Coast KPFA/Ann Garrison: For the past five years the San Luis Obispo-based Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility has been urging California legislators and oversight agencies to require peer reviewed seismic studies to measure the risk of earthquake damage to Pacific Gas and Electric's (PG&E's) nuclear power plant at Diablo Canyon and Southern California Edison's plant at San Onofre. The California Energy Commission has requested that the California Public Utilities Commission require PG&E do the latest, advanced 3-D studies on both old and new earthquake faults beneath Diablo Canyon before granting any ratepayer funding for its license renewal applications, but PG&E has opposed and fought the requirement to do the studies, and the CPUC has failed to act. Rochelle Becker, Executive Director of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, says that Japan's worsening nuclear catastrophe could have been California's, and that Californians should be able to insist that the studies be done now.

"Less than a week after concerns about earthquakes dominated public hearings on renewing Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant's operating licenses, the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday will consider asking federal regulators to delay the process until more high-tech seismic studies can be completed. Plant owner Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has proposed doing three-dimensional mapping of the ocean floor off the nuclear power plant. Such mapping and other state-of-the-art analysis would tell geophysicists more about the earthquake potential of the area around Diablo Canyon. Supervisors will vote whether to send a letter to the California Public Utilities Commission urging the agency to approve PG&E's request to have its customers pay for the $16.73 million studies, which are expected to take three years to complete. "