Hello again, welcome to To the Point. In this episode, we're going to be talking about how politics has taken on the trappings of religion, not just in this country, but in Europe as well. And it's on the left as well as on the right. But first of all, we have a more urgent question,

nuclear power and climate change in California. The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant on the

coast near San Luis Obispo is scheduled to shut down when its license expires in 2025. The question is,

is it safe enough to last for another 10 years? Governor Newsom says,

yes. He claims it'll be needed to avoid blackouts and keep the lights on as fossil-fueled power

gives way to climate change. By the time you hear this podcast, the state legislature might

have agreed to his last-minute demand to keep the plant open for another

decade. But the safety question just won't go away. The official historian of the Nuclear Regulatory

Commission now has cast new doubt on that, with a book raising disturbing questions about both

industry shortcuts and Black's government regulation. Edwin Lyman is a physicist who's director of nuclear power

safety for the Union of Concerned Scientists. Great to have you with us. Thanks. It's good to be here.

I want to talk to you about this new book, but first let's put it in context. The concern about

Diablo Canyon, the greatest concern, is the possibility it might have a meltdown like

Chernobyl or Fukushima in Japan. So what is the worst case scenario for Diablo Canyon?

Well, Diablo Canyon, of course, is in the, it's the nuclear reactor that's probably the most

seismically vulnerable in the United States because of its

location in California. And it is certainly possible that a severe earthquake could cause enough

damage to the plant safety systems or to its spent fuel pools that it could cause a meltdown of the fuel or spent fuel

and a large radiological release. And this has been known from the very beginning of the plant's

history. But the question is, has PG&E done enough to reduce the seismic risk and is the NRC using the right standards

in assessing whether the seismic risk is low enough to be acceptable?

PG&E, of course, the biggest utility in the United States, the NRC, the Nuclear Regulatory

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