Let me know if anyone thinks it is not too responsible to make this kind of post at this time.

It will be interesting to know what caused the multiple failures at the Japanese nuclear plants and compare this to the systems at the 2 coastal California plants. How much was shaking and how much was tsunami? How much was the way the shutdowns operated?

I am familiar with the faults near two California nuclear power plants: Diablo Canyon which is in a remote area between Morro Bay and San Luis Obispo. It is right on the coast.

San Onofre is right on the coast and very close to Highway 5, the main highway between Los Angeles and San Diego.

I've published on the Hosgri fault, but on the part south of latitude 35; the plant is north of there. The Hosgri fault sea floor trace is just a few kmn offshore of the plant, and it may dip towards the coast. The slip rate estimates are 1 to 3 mm/yr for the San Simeon fault to the north, which is part of the same fault system as the Hosgri fault. The fault is clearly right-lateral, despite publications stating that it is thrust.

The Newport- Inglewood fault is on the continental shelf within a few km of the San Onofre plant. Its upper 2 or 3 km dip steeply away from the coast. But, at a few km depth it intersects a landward-dipping fault responsible for the folding that creates the continental slope. This latter fault has long term slip rate of about 1 mm/yr: thrust or right-oblique thrust in the north and right-lateral in the south. I have an online USGS-NEHRP final technical report that includes this fault system; I linked to this here probably last spring or summer.

As I posted elsewhere, you cannot have a M8.9 quake in these parts of California. A M7.0 or a little larger seems likely for the largest probable quake on these fault systems. The accelerations could be high at the plants, but the shaking would be unlikley to last much longer than 30 s.
(caution: I have not calculated maximum magnitudes or looked at the probabilities of peak ground accelerations, but others no doubt have).

So, what were the failures in Japan, and are those failures impossible in california, and who is it who is saying they are impossible? Who is paying them?
Chris