Gary and Lauri Headrick – On the Frontline
Video # 6 in the SHUTDOWN ‘Preview Interview’ series produced by EON in co-operation with WomensEnergyMatters.org.
Gary & Lauri Headrick, founders of SanClementeGreen.org tell why they are devoting their lives to seeing that the crippled San Onofre nuclear power plant is shutdown for good. To get involved: SanOnofreSafety.org
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The evacuation areas surrounding the Diablo Canyon and San Onofre nuclear reactors overlap L.A. and San Diego dense population centers. Both nuclear facilities are in tsunami zones and located near earthquake faults. The San Onofre reactors have the country's worst safety record. A growing state-wide movement wants them to be permanently shut down.
Nuclear Free California Movement Grows
This is edition presents historic videos of the Rally and Berkeley City Council vote on the resolution to call for the shutting down of California’s nuclear power reactors and a transition to clean, sustainable energy sources. Go to NuclearFreeCalifornia.org for resources to help organize your community on this issue.
Nuclear Free California Rally 6-19-2012
Berkeley Rally for a Nuclear-Free California
[ This video is the whole one hour rally. Links to short individual speaker clips are below for your convenience. ]
Citizens rally outside Berkeley City Hall before City Council considers a resolution to decommission California nuclear plants and transition to green non-nuclear generation sources. Speakers include Bob Meola, Member of the Berkeley Peace & Justice Commission and primary author of the resolution; Dan Ellsberg, former Department of Defense strategic analyst who released The Pentagon Papers and Fellow at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation; Dan Hirsch, President of Committee to Bridge the Gap and former Director of the Program on Nuclear Policy at U.C. Santa Cruz ; Eco-philosopher and author Joanna Macy; and Jackie Cabasso of Western States Legal Foundation and Nuclear Free California.
The troubled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station has the worst safety record in the country and has been shut since January 2012 due to malfunctioning steam replacement generators that may keep it permanently shut. Both San Onfore and the Diablo Canyon facility are in earthquake fault zones, and have a long history of not taking seismic vulnerability seriously. California’s numbers of intensely irradiated fuel rods in densely packed onsite pools are among the highest in the country.
Both the rally and the resolution were sponsored by the Berkeley Peace & Justice Commission.
Close California’s Nukes – Berkeley City Council
6-19-2012 – The Berkeley City Council passes a resolution to decommission California nuclear plants and transition to green non-nuclear generation sources that asks Governor Brown to call upon the California Public Utilities Commission to take action; urges President Barack Obama and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reverse their support of nuclear power, stop loan guarantees to the nuclear energy industry, shut down nuclear facilities operating in seismically active areas of the U.S., establish a moratorium on building new nuclear reactors and investing in clean, renewable energy; and insists that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission withhold license renewal for Diablo Canyon and San Onofre Nuclear Power plants until seismic issues and offsite permanent storage are resolved.
Jackie Cabasso – – Nuclear Free California Rally
Jackie Cabasso of Western States Legal Foundation and Nuclear Free California speaks at the 6-19-2012 Nuclear Free California Rally in support of a Berkeley City Council resolution to shut down California’s nuclear reactors at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon.
Bob Meola – Nuclear Free California Rally
Bob Meola, Member of the Berkeley Peace & Justice Commission and author of the resolution. speaks at the 6-19-2012 Nuclear Free California Rally in support of a Berkeley City Council resolution to shut down California’s nuclear reactors at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon. Both the rally and the resolution were sponsored by the Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission.
Joanna Macy – Nuclear Free California Rally
Eco-philosopher Joanna Macy speaks at the 6-19-2012 Nuclear Free California Rally in support of a Berkeley City Council resolution to shut down California’s nuclear reactors at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon.
Dan Hirsch – Nuclear Free California Rally
Dan Hirsch, President of Committee to Bridge the Gap and former Director of the Program on Nuclear Policy at U.C. Santa Cruz , speaks at the 6-19-2012 Nuclear Free California Rally in support of a Berkeley City Council resolution to shut down California’s nuclear reactors at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon.
Daniel Ellsberg – Nuclear Free California Rally
Dan Ellsberg, former Department of Defense strategic analyst who released The Pentagon Papers and Fellow at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, speaks 6-19-2012 at the Nuclear Free California Rally in support of a Berkeley City Council resolution to shut down California’s nuclear reactors at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon. Both the rally and the resolution were sponsored by the Berkeley Peace & Justice Commission.
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The State has an Excess of Generating Capacity WITHOUT San Onofre and Diablo Canyon.
Founder/Director of Womens Energy Matters describes her discoveries as a professional intervenor on behalf of the public interest at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), private utilities’ resistance to energy efficiency, conservation and clean energy technologies in a state that already has an excess of power – without nuclear reactors.
This chart was developed by WEM based on official data.
SHUTDOWN ‘Preview Interviews’ are produced in cooperation with Womens Energy Matters. They include former nuclear executive S. David Freemen; SanOnofreSafety.org Founder, Donna Gilmore; San Clemente Green co-founders Lauri & Gary Headricks; Emergency Response Expert Deanna Polk; Investigative Reporter Harvey Wasserman; Urban Planner Torgen Johnson; WomensEnergyMatters.org Founder Barbara George and others-to-be-posted. Stay tuned to this blog and our YouTube Channel here
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Risk Assessment
Investigative Journalist, long-time anti-nuclear activist, editor of https://www.nukefree.org/ lays out the risks of a San Onofre restart.
Here’s his report on recent developments (4-13-2013) in San Onofre to the Public: DROP DEAD!
San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is build in an earthquake and tsunami zone, right next to the main north/south freeway between Los Angles and San Diego, 8.5 million people in the evacuation zone, in the middle of Camp Pendleton, a strategically vital U.S. military base. What could possibly go wrong?
The bitter battle over two stricken southern California reactors has taken a shocking seismic hit.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has ignored critical questions from two powerful members of Congress just as the Government Accountability Office has cast serious doubt on the emergency planning at the San Onofre nuclear plant.
At a cost of some $770 million, Southern California Edison and its partners installed faulty steam generators at San Onofre Units 2 and 3 that have failed and leaked.
Those reactors have been shut since January 2012 (similar defects doomed Unit 1 in 1992).
They’ve generated zero electricity, but SCE and its partners have billed ratepayers over a billion dollars for them.
SCE wants San Onofre reopened by June 1. The idea is to experiment with Unit 2 at 70% of full power for five months, despite widespread concerns that the defective generators will fail again.
That would require a license amendment, about which the NRC staff has asked Edison 32 key preliminary questions. But there’s been no official, adjudicated public hearing on Edison’s response.
On April 9, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Representative Ed Markey (D-MA) asked the NRC to keep Unit 2 shut until the safety issues can be fully vetted.
Boxer chairs the powerful Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, which oversees the NRC. Markey is the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and is the current front-runner to fill John Kerry’s vacated Senate seat.
Their letter to NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane says San Onofre must not reopen without a “comprehensive investigation” and “full opportunity for public participation.” Utility efforts to “shortcut the license amendment process,” they say, “would put public safety at risk.”
SCE’s backdoor dodge “was made despite evidence showing that there could be a significant hazard from the operation of the deficient steam generators,” they wrote. That, in turn, “would fall far short of the kind of consideration the 8 million people who live within 50 miles of San Onofre deserve.”
Boxer and Markey asked the NRC to respond by 4 pm April 10. Instead, the Commission staff publicly issued a “no significant hazard” ruling that would speed the re-licensing process–a precise renunciation of the Boxer/Markey concerns.
Markey, in turn, said the NRC “showed blatant disregard” for public safety.
Boxer said the ruling was “dangerous and premature,” especially since “the damaged plant is located in an area at risk of earthquake and tsunami.”
She added: “It makes absolutely no sense to even consider taking any steps to reopen San Onofre until these investigations look into every aspect of reopening the plant given the failure of tubes that carry radioactive water.”
But the Commission has said it’s at least two years away from issuing new regulations based on lessons learned from Fukushima. Former NRC Chair Greg Jaszco has criticized the industry for failing to respond to Fukushima’s warnings. The Commission, he says, is “just rolling the dice” on public safety.
Jaszco’s concerns were mirrored in a report issued April 9 by the Government Accountability Office warning that there were deep flaws in plans for evacuating southern California should San Onofre actually blow.
Mirroring widespread anger over soaring electric rates, Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik warned that ratepayers were tired of getting “the shaft” at San Onofre by being forced to pay Edison millions “for services not rendered.”
The escalated San Onofre uproar comes with the double-shorting of a critical Fukushima cooling system prompted by a hungry (now fried) rodent that ate through some cable insulation. The power outage threatened a Unit Four spent fuel pool laden with hundreds of tons of immeasurably dangerous rods.
The system crashed again when the owners botched the installation of a rodent protection system. They’ve further confirmed major radioactive leakage from at least three of five tanks holding Fukushima’s millions of gallons of contaminated wastes.
Parallel leaks at the Hanford nuclear facility in Washington State now threaten the Columbia River.
A major equipment crash at Missouri’s Calloway was preceded this week by an accident at Arkansas Nuclear One that killed at least one worker and injured at least seven others.
Once the atomic poster child, France is now exploring joining Germany in phasing out its expensive, decaying nuclear fleet for a massive new commitment to renewables.
Germany is turning coordinated large-scale natural systems into base load providers.
And the city of Los Angeles now offers green feed-in tariffs meant to power a Solartopian conversion.
Edison is fighting off installing wind or solar generators, hoping to keep the public paying for its failures at San Onofre.
But for SCE and the NRC to flat-out ignore Congressional leaders as powerful as Boxer and Markey may indicate how desperately they want San Onofre paid for by the public.
SCE warns of power shortages this summer, but San Onofre was off-line last summer without major impact. SCE wants the public to continue to pay for these nukes, faulty generators and all. But if they’re down another summer, the odds against them ever reopening will jump.
Two other US reactors—Kewaunee in Wisconsin and Florida’s Crystal River—will soon shut forever. Public pressure on New York’s Indian Point, Oyster Creek in New Jersey, and Vermont Yankee could drive the number of US reactors under 100 this year for the first time in decades.
Boxer (202-224-3553) and Markey (202-225-2836) are now being asked to hold those adjudicated public hearings in southern California, and to investigate the GAO’S findings on evacuation, before any new license is granted at San Onofre.
Rising anger over a dangerous restart and more billions flowing into utility pockets guarantee that this fight will continue to escalate. Edison and the NRC seem willing to ignore the public’s demands and those of Sen. Boxer and Rep. Markey. But they now face a growing, ever-angrier public upheaval.
The potential restart of San Onofre still hangs in the balance.
But the magnitude of the confrontation has taken a significant leap.
Stay tuned!….or, better still….get involved!
© 2013 The Progressive
Harvey Wasserman’s Solartopia Green Power & Wellness Show is at www.progressiveradionetwork.com, and he edits www.nukefree.org. Harvey Wasserman’s History of the US and Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth are at www.harveywasserman.com along with Passions of the PotSmoking Patriots by “Thomas Paine.” He and Bob Fitrakis have co-authored four books on election protection, including How the GOP Stole America’s 2004 Election, at www.freepress.org.
more Harvey Wasserman
Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
Source URL: https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/04/13-4
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Series Continues
Emergency response professional Deanna Polk talks about the many holes in radiological emergency preparedness in the region surrounding San Onofre nuclear reactors, including lack of training and resources for first responders and the absence of a realistic mass evacuation plan.
A related post from Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS)
Michael Mariotte, Executive Director
GAO Report Finds NRC Does Not Understand, Nor Do Its Regs Adequately Consider ‘Shadow Evacuation’ Phenomenon at Nuclear Reactor Sites
But report misses another key issue: Americans will want to be protected from radiation-induced cancer and disease, not just acute effectsWASHINGTON – April 10 – The U.S. Government Accountability Office today released a report finding that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not adequately understand the “shadow evacuation” phenomenon at nuclear reactors, and that its emergency planning regulations do not adequately account for the strong likelihood that far more people would evacuate, from much further distances than NRC plans, in a real nuclear emergency.
“The report did not cover another crucial and little-known flaw in current U.S. nuclear emergency plans,” said Michael Mariotte, executive director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service, “which is that they are designed to protect only against very high levels of radiation exposure capable of causing immediate health effects, and would not prevent large-scale exposure to radiation levels that would cause chronic illness, including cancer.”
“It’s past time for the NRC to strengthen its emergency rules—that’s a clear lesson from the Fukushima and Chernobyl nuclear disasters, both of which resulted in evacuations far beyond the NRC’s current 10-mile zone,” said Mariotte. “In a real radiation release, the American people will expect the government to act to protect them against exposures that could cause damaging health effects. This is especially important since the NRC’s current antiquated rules are based on exposure effects to an average adult man—yet women and children are far more susceptible to radiation than men.”
“But to make matters worse,” Mariotte added, “the EPA last week proposed radiation “clean-up” standards that could force Americans to live in highly-contaminated areas and ingest highly-contaminated food and water in the aftermath of a nuclear power accident or radiological attack. These standards would codify cancer and are completely at odds with civilized society. They must not be allowed to take effect.”
The GAO report mirrors one criticism of NRC emergency planning included in a Petition for Rulemaking submitted by NIRS last February, to expand the size of the current 10-mile Emergency Planning Zones around U.S. reactors to 25 miles and to make other planning and training improvements. That Petition, backed by some 6,000 organizations and individuals, is still pending at the NRC.
The GAO warned that by failing to account and plan for the actual numbers of people who would evacuate in a nuclear emergency, “NRC may not be providing the best planning guidance to licensees and state and local authorities.”
The “shadow evacuation” phenomenon was demonstrated at the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, where some 5,000 pregnant women and children under five within five miles of the site were advised to evacuate. But well over 100,000 people from 25 and more miles away actually fled.
The GAO conducted the report at the request of four U.S. Senators, Democrats Barbara Boxer of California, Robert P. Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and independent Bernard Sanders of Vermont, in the wake of a 2011 investigative series from Associated Press showing startling population increases near many nuclear reactors and a population outside the immediate 10-mile Emergency Planning Zones largely unaware of what to do in the event of a nuclear accident.
The GAO report is available here: https://www.gao.gov/prerelease/files/0G94_d13243.pdf
The NIRS Petition for Rulemaking is available here: https://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/emergency/petitionforrulemaking22012.pdfIn September 2012, NIRS’ executive director Michael Mariotte testified before the NRC on emergency planning shortcomings, including the failure to protect against chronic health effects: https://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/emergency/mmnrcepz911312.htm
More background information on nuclear emergency planning issues can be found on NIRS’ Nuclear 911 webpage here: https://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/emergency/emergencyhome.htm
Future SHUTDOWN ‘Preview Interviews’ will include San Clemente Green co-founders Lauri & Gary Headricks; Investigative Reporter Harvey Wasserman; Urban Planner Torgen Johnson; WomensEnergyMatters.org Founder Barbara George and others-to-be-posted. Stay tuned….
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