Grassroots Activism Brings San Onofre to the No Nukes Brink

[unhappycamper]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Grassroots-Activism-Brings-by-Harvey-Wasserman-130516-682.html



Grassroots Activism Brings San Onofre to the No Nukes Brink
By Harvey Wasserman
General News 5/16/2013 at 23:55:54

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With its massive money and clout, Southern California Edison was ready to ram through a license exception for a reactor whose botched $770 million steam generator fix had kept it shut for a year.

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By all accounts Southern California Edison should have the clout to restart it with ease. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been a notorious rubber stamp for decades. The California Public Utilities Commission, which decides how much the utilities can gouge from the ratepayers, has long been in Edison's pocket. State water quality regulations could force Edison to build cooling towers, a very expensive proposition that would likely lead to a quick retirement. But Gov. Jerry Brown has been deafeningly silent on the issue.

But San Onofre sits in an earthquake/tsunami zone halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. At least 8 million people live within a 50 mile radius, many millions more within 100. The reactors are a stone's throw from both a major interstate and the high tide line, with a 14-foot flood wall a bare fraction of the height of the tsunami that overwhelmed at Fukushima.

San Onofre Unit One was shut in 1992 by steam generator issues. Edison recently spent some three-quarters of a billion dollars upgrading the steam generators for Units 2 and 3. But the pipes have leaked and failed. Units 2 and 3 have been shut since January 2012. Edison has now asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to run Unit 2 at 70% power for five months to see how the reactor might do. An NRC panel has termed the idea "experimental."

[cprise]

1. K&R

[antiquie]

2. It is time for us to win.

Kicking.

Good link www.sanonofresafety.org