Shutter the nuclear nightmare on I-5

[question everything]

Sunday, December 12, 2004

Shutter the nuclear nightmare on I-5

By: RUSSELL D. HOFFMAN - For the North County Times

San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station should be shut down permanently. It is brittle, frail, old. Its bones are hardened. Its arteries are clogged and stiff. It keeps popping and poofing, bursting and spilling, leaking, spraying, steaming, venting, dripping, gushing, pouring out poisons into our environment.

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In normal daily operation, the facility also releases cesium-137, strontium-90, uranium, plutonium (both in a variety of isotopes) and hundreds of other radioactive "daughter products" created by the nuclear chain reaction. Although the plant owners say these legal releases are harmless, many insidious mechanisms for biological damage by radioactivity are now well-known in the scientific community and undeniable to any unbiased observer. In fact, no energy source is as damaging to our biological structure as ionizing radiation. One atomic decay inside your body can directly destroy 20,000 or more chemical bonds, including those that bind your DNA. A single damaged DNA strand can lead to fetal deformities or cancer.

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San Onofre's water heaters also all need to be replaced (about 30 per unit). Cost: an additional $7 million for each plant, plus $30 million or so for the "downtime." Pipes and joints at the plant have been cracking, and undoubtedly many need to be replaced ---- there are about 100 miles of pipes at the site. Last August, a pipe accident at a 27-year-old nuclear plant in Japan killed five workers. The pipe had eroded to 10 percent of its original thickness.

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Everything at the facility is suspect ---- including the record-keeping. The power plant is practically immune from state and local inspections, even in areas the Nuclear Regulatory Commission won't inspect because they are not "nuclear" areas!

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San Onofre makes money only for its owners, who are practically given uranium fuel by the federal government, which also promises to take it away after it has been turned into radioactive waste (at great profit) by Southern California Edison. Yucca Mountain shouldn't open, probably never will, and if it does, it's more than a decade away at best and will take about 25 years to fill. Meanwhile, new waste accumulates at the rate of 500 pounds every day at the plant; that waste may not fit at Yucca Mountain ---- it may need to wait for Yucca Mountain II! An operating nuclear plant is thousands of times more vulnerable to terrorism, forces of nature, design flaws or operator error than one that is shut down. A terrorist with an armor-plated bulldozer packed into a jacked-up house trailer and off-loaded at the state park could ruin San Onofre in minutes and take Southern California with it.

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San Onofre's power is replaceable. Our land and our lives are not.

Carlsbad resident Russell D. Hoffman is an independent researcher on energy solutions, a computer programmer, and a small-business owner. He has studied nuclear issues for more than 30 years and writes a newsletter that is distributed to nuclear physicists, doctors and activists in more than a dozen countries.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/12/12/opinion/commentary/21_06_2812_11_04.txt

[Ernesto]

1. I live within the 10 mile radius of Ranch Seco

Nearly 20 years ago, Sacramento County residents voted to shut it down. No one seems to miss the scary thing at all. Good riddance.