A completely unfair, totally inaccurate, and overly literal artistic depiction of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station "melting down." In reality, it's just venting radiation.
YOUR HELP is needed to stop the re-licensing of San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant. Please attend the Irvine City Council Meeting, Tuesday, March 27th , 6:00 PM. Council Member Larry Agran has place an item on the agenda regarding San Onofre.
Council Member Agran is taking action on a request made by the San Clemente Council City Council to join them in demanding the removal of the 4,000 tons of high-level radioactive used fuel rods currently stored on-site. If they cannot be removed, there should be no 20 year extension on the original 40 year license.
Along with a call for implementation of safety measures brought to light by the accident in Fukushima, Japan, the waste storage on-site at San Onofre is at the heart of the resolution passed by the San Clemente Council on October 18, in a 5-0 vote. The resolution also called for letters to be sent to Edison, the NRC, and elected officials. Additionally, letters were sent to each and every city in Orange County asking the councils to join with San Clemente demanding radioactive waste removal.
On February 7, the City Council of Laguna Beach passed a similar resolution.
It is now Irvine’s turn. Your presence will let the council know the people of Irvine share the concerns about San Onofre and its waste storage.
Your three minute comments to the council are welcome. We are also asking that green is worn to the meeting so the council can identify supporters in the audience.
Please attend this important meeting. If you have questions, please call Marion Pack at 949-922-3273, or email at marionpack1@yahoo.com.
Newspapers have reported that should a Japan type melt down occur, the evacuation area for San Onofre is a radius of 50 miles. That includes all of Orange County and parts of Los Angeles, San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
Besides the fact that evacuation of millions of people in this region would be virtually impossible in a timely manner, the reality that much of that area could be uninhabitable going forward makes such an event not only a human disaster but also a national economic disaster.
This reality, not to mention the periodic management failures of SCE in various areas of its responsibility (for instance, remember the wind damage last fall in the Pasadena area wherein the company was forced to admit it was not really prepared for such an event) makes it evident that San Onofre is a horrible location for a nuclear generating station.
When it was built much of southern Orange County was sparsely occupied ranch land, now it is home to a million or more people. The plant should be shut down and demolished, with the site cleaned up including all stored spent radioactive fuel.
Under the Obama Administration funding for development of Yucca Mountain waste site was terminated effective with the 2011 federal budget passed by Congress on April 14, 2011. The US GAO stating that the closure was for political, not technical or safety reasons. This leaves United States civilians without any long term storage site for high level radioactive waste, currently stored on-site at various nuclear facilities around the country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository
Having spent a fair amount of time in Las Vegas politics, I can tell you that Yucca Mountain was closed for safety reasons. The problem was less the caves themselves than the dangers of transporting waste there. One good-sized truck accident (or a deliberate act of sabotage) leading to a radiation spill could have hammered the Las Vegas tourism industry for years, crippling the entire state.
If I have to note this in Wikipedia in order to convince you, then I suppose I can.
I bet if we can treat Harry Reid to a one week all expenses paid excursion to Pahrump that his brain would be so scrambled that we can get YM by the Senate.
You’ll have to send the rest of the elected legislature there too too. The only Nevada politician I know who was stupid enough to say “send us your nuclear waste, just drive it right past Vegas, thanks” was Sharron Angle.
I might favor digging a large hole and burying it in Elko, so long as the rest of Elko was also in the whole. Ha-ha — sorry, Nevada politics joke there. My insincere apologies to the Elklohomans!
*Our man in Cedar City, Utah….is all too familiar with all things nuclear. You might refer carefully to his comments below:
The people who are calling for the shutdown of San Onofre had their chance to strongly object to its restart several years ago when the plant went through a rebuild. The restart of these plants undergoes strict oversight by the NRC engineers. I don’t know who the developers and buyers of the homes and business who have built close to the plant over the years but the county planners might have made a mistake allowing the extensive development within 5 miles of the plant. (there are housing developments within 1.5 miles)
There are far more technically experienced people than I who could give better testimony on the facts of San Onofre power plant but the shrill outbursts of political opportunists just confuse the true issues and the facts surrounding the continued use of that plant. The comments that say “let’s shutdown the plant and clean up the site” were probably the same persons who objected to the Nevada Yucca Mt. site and now where does the reactor waste go ? We could be like the French and just dump it in the deeps of the ocean … NOT !!!
DM
On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 12:51 PM, wrote:
Irvine Council to Consider Asking San Onofre to “Spare the Rods” | Orange Juice
http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2012/03/irvine-council-to-consider-asking-san-onofre-to-spare-the-rods/
*We forwarded this to our man in Cedar City…his comments are above the link.
rw
I don’t think that many are calling for an immediate shutdown. This is about re-licensing the plant, the lack of which would lead to a phase-out.
Tell your friend that a site that’s built to withstand a 7.0 earthquake (if memory serves) is intrinsically unsafe if (if memory serves) a new fault is found there that is capable of an 8.0 quake.
We shouldn’t be dumping nuclear waste at all. We don’t have to produce it. Sun, wind, ocean thermal gradients, etc. — as well as some of the newer ideas in nuclear energy that would not produce waste — are better alternatives as we phase out SONGS.
Your friend who “knows a lot” about nuclear power really ought to drop the insults toward people who are rightfully concerned about San Onofre. They are entirely reasonable given what is going on in Japan.
Many people who “know a lot” about nukes make their living from it, and many of them say the only problem with Chernobyl was a few extra cases of thyroid cancer among kids. They say that people who have concerns about nuclear radiation are “uninformed” “uneducated” “shrill” and “emotional.”
However, regardless of how much physics one “expert” might have in his head, he is *not* qualified to address the health effects of ionizing radiation. Or any other type of radiation, for that matter.
The only people who are qualified to speak on those issues—credibly–are biologists and epidemiologists or those with a background in the behavior of energy on living tissue—*who are not in any way connected with the nuclear industry.*
To say the “shrill” people had a chance to “speak” earlier (before the 671 million dollar cheat) is disrespectful and disgusting in this context of public health that concerns so many millions. I’m sure they did speak then, too.
It ignores the fact that we are seeing, firsthand (those who are paying attention through the Net, because it’s not on the news) the results of a nuclear accident in Japan that is currently poisoning and devastating the country, in every sense.
If 3/11 wasn’t a wake-up call to your friend, then who cares what he has to say?
‘Cause we’ve heard it aaaaallllllllllllllllllll before, over and over, and I, personally, am sick of it.
The nuke industry got its way in Japan for years getting away with lax oversight and financial cheating. And it’s getting its way in Georgia now with two new nukes being built even though the NRC’s Greg Jaczko last year said his agency was *unable* to enforce fire safety regulations that are being worked-around at plants across the U.S. (See story at Propublica.org) And yea, money for those nukes is going to come out of my own pocket and I can’t do a bloody thing about it.
Land of the Free–Free to make people sick in the name of Profit.
Interesting post from the Register:
The “wear and tear” on the San Onofre plant isn’t “extremely unusual” as you suggest. My brother met and spoke first hand with an unnamed scientist who works at the plant. They installed the wrong generators when they overhauled the plant in 2009- they’re too powerful, which is what is causing the hoses to fail prematurely. There are also substantial operating risks associated with the plant including low morale among plant workers. e.g., during the last shut down in which some radioactive steam leaked out, there was a 40% response rate to the emergency procedures in place. That is 6 of 10 workers DID NOT respond according to plan. Given that the plant is only designed for a 7.8 quake, if we ever have “the Big One” or a tidal surge from an offshore quake, the entire southern CA basin is toast- Inland to Riverside, San Diego, OC and LA. Vegas is safe due to its distance and altitude. Finally, recently, two workers who were exposed to the radioactive water kept at the plant (one jumped in to rescue the other) have never been heard from– after 8 hours of decontamination and being flown immediately to NY. None of this has been in the press. The press reports one person fell in and wasn’t in any danger. This is all FIRST HAND info from a scientist who works for SCE inside the plant. Workers at that plant are on edge. This is a bad dream waiting to come true.
The risks of keeping a plant like this in operation FAR outweigh the benefits. For similar reasons, Germany has decided to eliminate all nuclear power since the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. Imagining a similar disaster in Southern CA is mind boggling.
A new paper by Notre Dame researchers describes method for cleaning up nuclear waste. The costs and feasibility associated with storing nuclear waste may no longer be obstacles on the road to cleaner energy.
Thomas E. Albrecht-Schmitt, professor of civil engineering and geological sciences and concurrent professor of chemistry and biochemistry, showcases Notre Dame Thorium Borate-1 (NDTB-1) as a crystalline compound which can be tailored to safely absorb radioactive ions from nuclear waste streams. Once captured the radioactive ions can then be exchanged for higher charged species of a similar size, recycling the material for re-use.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-03/uond-npb032012.php
I’m interested in the emerging technology of thorium reactors, among others that I hear about, but I’d want to hear more from critics as well from proponents. What we have now clearly isn’t working.
Part of the problem, frankly, is that we have a history of companies and scientists making claims that don’t bear out. Waste sites (not just nuclear) are then placed where they’ll primarily hurt the poor and politically powerless. The mistakes are discovered, people die, but enforcers get dissuaded or bought off and those representing the people hurt are outgunned. (This has been especially common in Superfund site litigation.)
So blithe assurances that THIS TIME IT’S SAFE leave me unconvinced. Too often the trick has been to make sure that the pain falls upon someone who can’t fight back. And then everyone (except people who think that the poor get what they deserve) acts sad. If that’s the game, then any flaws in the process aren’t going to be of much concern to its proponents — they just have to make sure that someone else is the subject of the experiment and push hard until it’s a fait accompli. The nuclear industry has earned its untrustworthy reputation; it will have to work hard to transcend it. Blithe assurances won’t do.
When you’re willing to have one of these thorium borate sites in your backyard, let me know.
*Well, this conversation is now…just that…conversation. The facilities at San Onofre have been closed until further notice…says the NRC. They will not be restarting it, until probably….the old style cooling tubes replace the so-called hype-new cooling tubes….which went to hell in handbasket in less than two years. Thank goodness that the it was just $631 million dollars spent to replace those tubes just two years ago. Kind of reminds us of the asphalt treatment orginally given to the 73 Tollway which required a complete revision just five years later. The ramifications to a bad restart of the San Onofre Facility however, may have more serious repercussions. Safety first folks!
Does anyone have a proposal for how to replace the energy production that would be lost with the shutdown of this plant? While Nuclear energy isn’t the safest form around, San Onofre isn’t contributing to the already bad air quality problem in Southern California like a fossil fuel power plant would, and isn’t impinging upon our already scarce water sources as a hydroelectric plant would. Unless there is a huge expansion of green energy (solar panels on homes, wind farms that require large amounts of valuable property), I honestly think living under the shadow of a nuclear plant for the time being is the lesser of many evils.
Michael Marchese
Tulane University
@Michael – The nuke power is being replaced by coal burning in neighboring states and natural gas. I was surprised to learn that up to 20 percent of SCE’s power is provided by alternative sources like wind, solar and geothermal.
Hydro does not use up water resources at all – like a watermill the water just passes by the generators.
I do, but it would require repealing 75 years of bad public policy that has affected our environment and our civil liberties while increasing our prison population.
http://www.hemp4fuel.com
*Replacing the tubes ….back to original….will probably cost $800 million dollars. Who
is going to pay for that? Customers? Then if something happens like Japan….we just move the OC and most of the City of Los Angeles to Barstow?