Your point is clear enough, but both the parent & grandparent comments are misuing the terminology. Earthquake sizes are usually expressed via Richter scale or

Your point is clear enough, but both the parent & grandparent comments are misuing the terminology. Earthquake sizes are usually expressed via Richter scale or Moment Magnitude Scale values, which both attempt to quantify the total energy released by the quake. These scales do NOT quantify the force experienced at any particular location, which depends heavily on distance from the epicenter and local geology. For that kind of quantity, you would use a seismic intensity scale (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismic_intensity_scales https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismic_intensity_scales). So it's wrong to say that a quake "...would not be 8 when it reaches Diablo Canyon" because the value '8' is an MMS or Richter value. Instead, you could say that "...the damage potential would be reduced by the distance to Diablo Canyon."