Supervisors take action on San Onofre emergency planning

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Source: San Diego Daily Transcript

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved negotiations with Southern California Edison on a memorandum of understanding that would bring to the county new offsite emergency planning funds related to the closed San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

The discussion drew a number of speakers at the public hearing, many -- including former San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre -- who said they were concerned about the ongoing storage of nuclear waste from the site in San Diego County.

While board Chairman Bill Horn and the other four supervisors agreed with those concerns, Horn and county staff reminded those in attendance that the memorandum of understanding (MOU) didn't affect what's to come of the spent fuel stores, and Horn said ahead of the vote that he was in support of receiving the funds.

"As long as there is nuclear waste at San Onofre, there is a risk, and there is a need for emergency planning, and there is a need for emergency funding," Supervisor Dianne Jacob said as she sought clarification from county staff, which called retaining the county's emergency response capability a "prudent" measure.

The supervisors decided to add a motion ensuring that the MOU not in any way indicate that San Diego County approves of continued storage of the nuclear waste at the site.

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Read more: http://www.sddt.com/news/article.cfm?SourceCode=20150721czm&_t=Supervisors+take+action+on+San+Onofre+emergency+planning

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1. Nuke storage by the sea: Aguirre equates Southern California Edison to "drunken frat boys"

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2015/jul/21/ticker-nuke-storage-plan-san-onofre/

Nuke storage by the sea

Aguirre equates Southern California Edison to "drunken frat boys"

By Dave Rice, July 21, 2015

Concerns over nuclear waste generated by the now-defunct San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station expressed by environmental activists for years took another turn in the spotlight on Monday (July 20), as local activist attorney Mike Aguirre called attention to what he terms "SCUD," or Southern California Uranium Dump.

Today, July 21, county supervisors are considering a $1.6 million agreement with San Onofre operator Southern California Edison to provide offsite emergency planning in the event of an on-site catastrophe. The specter for such an event looms as long as spent nuclear fuel, which remains highly volatile for millions of years, remains stored at the former power-generating facility.

Concerns about the San Onofre site as a long-term waste-storage site include several nearby earthquake faults. Experts have called for the fuel to be stored in dry casks after an initial five years' cooling-off period in open pools of water, which Edison officials say they'll do. Still, the casks are only expected to safely contain radioactive waste for about 25 years, though no long-term waste-storage facility exists and, even if one were cleared for construction immediately, it could be decades before waste is ready to leave the seaside locale near a public beach and within a potential evacuation zone that could displace millions of residents in a worst-case scenario.

“It is ludicrous that the same company that created the disaster by skirting safety rules is now responsible for the cleanup," decried Aguirre in a release Monday afternoon. "They have behaved like drunken frat boys, leaving a mess on the beach for the adults to clean up. Can we really trust them to do it properly?"

[bananas]

2. San Diego County wades into nuclear-waste dilemma

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/jul/21/county-nuclear-waste-dilemna/

San Diego County wades into nuclear-waste dilemma
By Morgan Lee | 3:40 p.m. July 21, 2015

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors is considering lobbying state and federal officials to move nuclear waste away from the site of the retired San Onofre nuclear plant near the northern county limits.

Nuclear safety activists on Tuesday urged the board to take a more active role in determining the fate of the nuclear plant’s stockpile of spent fuel rods.

The discussion erupted as the board voted unanimously to continue accepting emergency planning funds from San Onofre plant operator Southern California Edison.

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Elsewhere in California, spent nuclear is stockpiled at the site of the Humbolt Bay nuclear plant outside Eureka, which was shut in 1976.

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[bananas]

3. "Report of Malfeasance and Institutional Corruption at the California Public Utilities Commission"

From yesterday:

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Board-of-Sups-to-Vote-to-Accept-16M-from-SCE-for-San-Onofre-Nuclear-Storage-317659341.html

Board of Supes to Vote to Accept $1.6M from SCE for San Onofre Nuclear Storage
By Artie Ojeda and Samantha Tatro

Updated at 10:07 PM PDT on Monday, Jul 20, 2015

San Diego County is considering an agreement with energy utility Southern California Edison (SCE) to provide $1.6 million in emergency planning funding for San Onofre's nuclear waste.

San Onofre’s generators have been offline now for two years, but the uranium left behind, which will be poisonous to humans for the next 173 million years, will be permanently stored in high-tech stainless steel drums designed to last for 25 years.

In a report on the issue, "Report of Malfeasance and Institutional Corruption at the California Public Utilities Commission," one attorney detailed disasters involving public utilities, disasters that should inform the decision on a local nuclear emergency.

“Imagine what will happen if San Diego were the sight of a major nuclear disaster and that you'll have to have the kind of relocation, the kind of loss of life that you see in Fukushima,” said attorney Mike Aguirre.

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[bananas]

4. Time to scrap San Onofre settlement - By San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/jul/19/time-to-scrap-san-onofre-settlement/

Time to scrap San Onofre settlement
By San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board | 5 p.m. July 19, 2015

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... there are so many stark, basic questions related to the PUC’s November 2014 ratification of a plan divvying up $4.7 billion in costs related to the closure of the San Onofre nuclear power plant that on this matter, the agency deserves no deference at all. It’s time that Gov. Jerry Brown – who has appointed every member of the PUC board – the Legislature or both force the PUC to reopen its decision.

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The nuclear power plant had to be closed in 2012 after leaks were found in each of the four Mitsubishi steam generators serving the plant’s two reactors. The generators were not old; they’d been installed from 2009 to 2011 at a cost of $670 million. The questions these facts raise are obvious: Did Mitsubishi provide the utilities with defective generators? Or were they turned into junk because of awful plant management and maintenance practices? Or did the generators fail because of a combination of defects and incompetence?

But instead of ordering a thorough, transparent investigation of how the new equipment could break down so quickly, then-PUC President Michael Peevey focused on who would pay for the shutdown costs. In a scene straight out of a conspiracy thriller, Peevey met secretly with an Edison official in March 2013 at a hotel room in Warsaw, Poland, and sketched out the initial framework for the deal.

This meeting is only one of dozens of outrageous examples of Peevey’s machinations with state utilities that have been uncovered by the Union-Tribune Watchdog team and other California journalists, which spurred the FBI to raid his home in a Los Angeles suburb in January.

But instead of realizing the urgency of helping expose these machinations and regaining the public’s trust, Peevey’s replacement, Michael Picker, has circled the wagons and obstructed journalists trying to learn more about the San Onofre debacle and many other PUC matters.

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[bananas]

5. Group: Take San Onofre judge off case

From last week:

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/jul/16/remove-darling-motion/

Group: Take San Onofre judge off case

Coalition says Darling should be removed, as she's drawn scrutiny from investigators

By Jeff McDonald | 4:12 p.m. July 16, 2015

A San Diego consumer group is petitioning state utility regulators to dismiss the judge they have assigned to preside over the San Onofre nuclear plant shutdown proceeding, citing perceived conflicts of interest.

The Coalition to Decommission San Onofre filed a 22-page argument this week laying out reasons that Melanie Darling, a judge for the California Public Utilities Commission, should not remain on the case, which remains active three and a half years after the plant closed amid a radiation leak.

Among other things, the group cited a report in The San Diego Union-Tribune last week revealing that Darling is among 22 commission and utility officials whose emails have been requested by state investigators as part of a criminal investigation into possible influence-peddling.

“We note that the general restrictions on judges need not be proven,” wrote the coalition’s Ray Lutz. “Even the ‘appearance of impropriety’ is forbidden. Certainly, it is improper for any judge to rule on a matter where that judge is also part of the case. This is common sense.”

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The 22-page pdf can be downloaded from http://cdn.sandiegouniontrib.com/news/documents/2015/07/16/lutz_v_darling.pdf
or viewed in a browser at http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/documents/2015/jul/16/document-seeking-removal-judge-melanie-darling/

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6. Search Warrants Executed In Probe Into San Onofre Settlement

Two weeks ago:

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/07/06/search-warrants-reportedly-served-as-probe-into-san-onofre-settlement-appears-to-intensify/

Search Warrants Reportedly Executed In Probe Into San Onofre Settlement
July 6, 2015 9:50 PM

SAN CLEMENTE (CBSLA.com) — The anger of some Southern California Edison ratepayers about a deal that led to them being stuck with a $3.3 billion bill, 70 percent of what it will cost to shut down the defunct San Onofre nuclear power plant in San Clemente, may have sparked an investigation that now appears to be heating up.

“Edison knew that they were going to make more money decommissioning than they were to keep making electricity so they tried to get the public to pay for the steam generator debacle, which they messed up,” Gene Stone, a San Onofre activist, told KCAL9 Political Reporter Dave Bryan.

Stone is with the group Residents Organized for a Safe Environment and says the deal approved by the California Public Utilities Commission had a bad odor about it from the start.

State agents have now executed search warrants at the San Francisco headquarters of the Public Utilities Commission, as well as at the Rosemead headquarters of Southern California Edison as reported by the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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[Peace Patriot]

7. Nuke power: the 'gift' that keeps on giving...death, destruction, corruption...

...forever.