Protest against restarting San Onofre nuclear power plant

NUCLEAR DISASTER SURVIVORS AND EAST COUNTY RESIDENTS JOIN PROTEST AT SAN ONOFRE By Nadin Abbott East County Magazine, May 3, 2012 (San Onofre)—Residents from across Southern California and as far away as Japan turned out for a protest
at San Onofre this week to call for a permanent shut down of nuclear reactors which have been offline since January 31 amid growing safety concerns following a steam leakage and discovery of cracked tubes.
Yesterday, however Southern California Edison however announced its
intent to bring the facilities back online by mid-June, if the Nuclear
Regulary Commission grants approval.
“The most important things to me are my children,” said Chrystal
Coleman, a Vista resident who displayed photos of children hideously
deformed by radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown. Coleman
said she would “do anything” to stop this from happening in San Diego.

Libbe HaLevy, M.A., CAC spoke of her experiences during the Three Mile
Island nuclear accident. She was there when the disaster started. The
first day at Middletown, in the shadow of Three Miles Island, people
thought it was nothing to worry about, she indicated. By the second
she could have left, but chose to stay and cover the story. By the
third, cars were going around telling people to stay indoors.
Evacuation was impossible.

HaLevy pointed out that according to Arnie Gunderson there has never
been an honest reading of the radiation at Three Mile Island. It is
not because nobody tried, but rather that the equipment fried from the
intense release.

HaLevy also emphasized that this is a David and Goliath fight, since
the people are fighting powerful forces in the utility, as well as
corporate interests. From her terror filled days during the Three Mile
Island event she learned that there was “no basement to hide,” from
the radiation……
Don Hirsh raised the alarm on problems Southern California Edison has
had with the National Regulatory Commission. (NRC). According to Hirsh
the issues with the San Onofre plant are very serious, and the steam
generator problems are above where the plant should remain
operational. The problem he sees is that the regulatory capture
(industry representatives in the regulatory agencies) has been so
severe that they may still succeed in restarting the reactors.

Hector Baimelli and family from Solana Beach
Moreover, he mentioned that evacuation is a fiction. Anybody who is
familiar with traffic in Southern California would be forced to nod in
agreement. In his opinion a worst case scenario not only will destroy
billions in property, and kill hundreds of thousands of southern
Californians. He also pointed something else.

The US Government advised American living in Japan to evacuate within
the fifty mile exclusion zone. The Evacuation zone around San Onofre
is only ten miles. A fifty mile radius would include San Diego and
much of East County.

Hirsh raised technical issues, such as the possible risk of
criticality, or material that starts to fission again in storage
units. He cited Southern California Edison’s very poor safety record,
including not maintaining logs on fire watches to make sure that
accidental fires do not start. He also mentioned that Unit Two has
lost about 12% of the steam generator tubes, and they should only be
able to operate with at the most an 8% loss.
Yuki Nakamizo from Japan

The worst case scenario for Southern California Edison is that we go
through the summer without any rolling blackouts or other power
issues. It will prove that it can be done. ……
Among those who came to this demonstration were the Nakamizo family,
who came from Tokyo to participate in this demonstration, and bear
witness to what has happened in Japan and could happen here. ….
http://eastcountymagazine.org/node/9536