Good friends,
Good friends,
Tonight is the start of a full court press to keep San
Onofre shutdown. We?ll be meeting at the Irvine
City Council before 6:00pm if possible. Since we are last on the agenda, this
is a safe bet you won?t miss anything if you get there before then. They are at
One Civic Center Plaza at the corner of Alton and Harvard. Please wear something
green. See more details here.
It was alarming to know they had to close Concordia
elementary school due to a fire at the nuclear power plant last week. The media
failed to mention the significance of such an event and simply assured the
public that we were in no danger. Did you know that the reason a fire is a much
bigger deal than the story we heard on the news? It was discovered years ago
that all of the most critical wiring at the plant has flammable insulation as an
unintended result of cost cutting measures. This serious and pervasive problem
was mitigated by having round the clock fire watches instead of having to
replace all of the wiring in the plant. They were caught falsifying records
showing they had done the watches when they had not been done for 5 years. If a fire shorts-out the control system
they would lose control of the reactors, possibly resulting in a meltdown.
Don’t you think this ought to be part of the story too?
Yesterday we got another reminder that we are living on
borrowed time when a recently discovered fault made itself known, centered
right here in San Juan Capistrano. Fukushima proved that predicting earthquakes
is an imperfect science, yet even the experts agree that we have crossed the
margin of safety at San Onofre from insurmountable seismic forces. At present we
are nearly three precious months into a five year period which is needed to
store thousands of tons of highly radioactive and volatile waste that has
accumulated onsite since starting the first reactor. It takes that long for the
waste to be cool enough to be moved to more stable dry cask storage containers,
(still on site unfortunately). The time to hold firm on keeping them from
restarting is NOW. We may not get another chance like this one. How many more
warnings will it take?
Meanwhile, we hear things like this from the industry. In a
brief telephone interview with The
Associated Press, Dietrich initially said: ?We feel that there?s a greater
than 50 percent chance? that one or both reactors will be back up by the
summer. But he quickly retracted the prediction, saying it was premature and
the plant will not be restarted until it is safe to do so. The fact is that we
have been doing just fine without nuclear power all this time, and state
records show we can get through the peak months of summer with little or no
trouble at all.
Recently I was accused of being a fear monger, a liar, a
person out to do others financial harm in a live
interview/debate on PBS. In truth, it is the industry that is guilty of
placing profit above public safety, as we see time and time again. How much
longer will we tolerate this? Please stand firm with us as we enter a heightened
struggle in the next few months. Once we get through summer without blackouts it
could be ?Game Over? for San Onofre.
Gary
PS ? If you want to help with donations instead of time, you
can send checks to San Clemente Green, 2837 Penasco, San Clemente, CA 92673.
Thank you.