Abalone Alliance

The Abalone Alliance (1977–1985) was a nonviolent civil disobedience group formed to shut down the Pacific Gas and Electric Company's Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant near San Luis Obispo (on the central California coast). They modeled their affinity group-based organizational structure after the Clamshell Alliance which was then protesting the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in coastal New Hampshire. The group of activists took the name "Abalone Alliance" referring to the tens of thousands of wild California Red Abalone that were killed in 1974 in Diablo Cove when the unit's plumbing had its first hot flush.

On August 7, 1977, 1,500 people demonstrated at the gate of Diablo, resulting in 47 arrests. The next year, 5,000 people rallied and 487 were arrested. On September 10, 1981, the Abalone Alliance occupied the site, leading to 1,960 arrests. Nearly 20,000 people showed up in support. At the end of the 10 day action, a 25-year-old engineer discovered a mirror image reversal in the seismic blueprints. PG&E was forced spend $3 billion and 3 additional years of repairs before reopening. Fact|date=February 2007 Performers such as Jackson Browne and Wavy Gravy joined the protest and described the mass jailings as a "tornado of talent." In 1984, the Alliance organized the Peoples Emergency Response Plan, where affinity groups blockaded at the Diablo Gates over a 4-month period.

In late 1981, AA activists primarily from Davis and Sonoma, along with other AA activists and local opposition held an eight-day sit-in at the State Capitol, encouraging then-Governor Jerry Brown to use emergency powers to shut down the Rancho Seco nuclear generating station; the plant was closed by a public vote in 1989, a decade before its operating license was to expire. Thus, activists from the Abalone Alliance contributed to the closure of one of California's three operating nuclear plants. Other AA activists went on to form the Livermore Action Group, the Vandenberg Action Coalition, and the Lenten Desert Experience at the Nevada Test Site. At its peak, there were over 60 groups who were affiliated with the alliance, including Greenpeace and Alliance for Survival. The group was hit with one of the first known SLAPP suits in U.S. History, where the Pacific Legal Foundation and San Luis Obispo County attempted to legally obtain the names of all members and supporters, demanding that they pay for the costs of the 1981 blockade. The suit lasted nearly 5 years, before being withdrawn just before going before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Mothers for Peace filed a legal challenge with the D.C. Circuit Court in an attempt to stop the operation of Diablo Canyon but was denied in November 1984. In January, of 1985 NRC Commissioner Asselstine leaked a copy of the NRC's secret transcripts to KRON TV in San Francisco, documenting how the NRC had illegally licensed Diablo Canyon without properly reviewing evacuation plans as previously required. The Mother's then reopened their challenged based on the leaked NRC transcripts. Judge Robert Bork (Nixon's Saturday night massacre judge) of the DC Court took the lead in denying the appeal April 25th 1986. Bork claimed that to look at the leaked transcripts would be judicial activism.

The Diablo Canyon controversy started in 1963 when PG&E threw in the towel on its failed attempt to build a reactor complex at Bodega Head north of San Francisco. The Bodega struggle started in 1958, but was opposed by a group led by a UC professor and young Sierra Club activist named David Pessonen. This was the first antinuclear power campaign in the US. The main reason that the facility wasn't built was due its location less than 1000 feet from the epicenter of the fault zone that destroyed San Francisco in 1906. The only remnants of construction is an $8 million duck pond.

Rather than face public opposition at Diablo Canyon, PG&E approached the Sierra Club's president and cut a deal with certain board members where Diablo would be chosen rather than the Nipomo Dunes area. The wife of the Sierra Club president, who worked out the deal would then be elected to PG&E's board of directors. As part of the plan, the decision was made when Sierra Club board member Martin Litton was out of the country, the only member who knew of Diablo's history and importance. The board was flown down to see the site in Frank Sinatra's Lear Jet with Danny Kaye on board providing entertainment. Kaye would later become opposed to nuclear power.

The Sierra Club president forbade any chapter from opposing Diablo Canyon, so The San Luis Obispo Chapter formed the Shoreline Preservation Conference to oppose the construction on the grounds that the area had been proposed as a state park, was a sacred Chumash Indian site, had some of the largest oak trees on the West Coast, was located on the 2nd to last coastal wilderness area in California and was very likely sitting on the fault that destroyed Santa Barbara in a 1927 earthquake. The internal dispute over Diablo Canyon was a primary reason for the split up of the Sierra Club, that led to the formation of Friends of the Earth by David Brower.

From 1965, the Shoreline Preservation Conference demanded that regulators investigate the danger of faults near the proposed site, but was ignored. In 1972 a Los Angeles reporter discovered a report by Shell oil company geologists done prior construction at Diablo of the existence of the Hosgri Fault 2.2 miles from the facility. Just after the story broke, the lawyer who had been pushing for years to do fault investigations, for the Shoreline Preservation Conference was found dead in his car. The media immediately claimed it was a suicide, but no investigation was done. As a result of the discovery, regulators forced PG&E to redesign and reinforce the facility.

The Diablo Canyon Reactors were originally estimated to cost just over $300 million when first given the permission to construct the facility. When finally opened in 1985, construction costs were $5.8 billion and financing costs nearly an addition $7 billion. After the 1981 blueprint mirror image mistake was discovered during the Abalone Alliance's blockade at Diablo's gates, the reactor's construction costs stood at $2.1 billion. PG&E permission to go ahead with operation was reversed by the NRC and the company was required to go through a major review and rebuild. PG&E was unable to find further financing from any source to continue construction, until president Ronald Reagan ordered the EPA to give the company nearly $2.5 billion in loans.

The controversy did not come to a close until December 1988 when the California PUC gave PG&E a $54 billion 30-year, cost plus rate contract to operate Diablo Canyon. It has been considered the most controversial nuclear power plant in U.S. history because of its location 2.2 miles from the Hosgri Fault.

ee also

*Anti-nuclear movement in the United States
*Shad Alliance
*List of anti-nuclear protests in the United States

References

*cite book|title=Political Protest and Cultural Revolution|first=Barbara|last=Epstein|year=1991|location=Berkeley, CA
*cite book|title=Something Good for a Change|first=Wavy|last=Gravy|year=1993 ISBN 0-312-09391-8
* [http://www.energy-net.org/01NUKE/DIABLO1.HTM Diablo Canyon Timeline]

External links

* [http://www.energy-net.org Abalone Alliance archivist] site
* [http://www.fsm-a.org/stacks/AP_files/APBodegaHead.html Bodega Head controversy]