Energy

FUBAR is San Onofre Nuke Plant – By Jerry Collamer

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Military jargon harbors a whole host of boots-on-the-ground acronyms depicting hopeless combat situations. Given a soldier’s front-line reality of slim to none chance of success, but ordered to “Charge!” anyway, it’s no wonder G.I.’s create cynically coded acronyms when facing-down the impossible. Similarly, the Orange County Register’s front page analysis of SONGS/San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station’s degenerating pipes (leaking!!!), where the process of super heating water via nuclear fission, then pumping the crazy-hot radioactive liquid through thousands of pipes to create steam — to turn a turbine — to make electricity, is cracking SONGS’ pipes — is by every definition, FUBAR. Or snafu’d. Take your pick.

Off-line, FUBAR, forever
SONGS permanently switched off due to really bad plumbing....

SONGS’ dog-chasing-its-tail reality, aka melting uranium, to create ungodly heat, is cannibalizing itself. Precisely why nuke-plant life-spans are measured in dog-years. Or God help us all — because SONGS is rotting, from the inside out as you read this. Call it a self inflicted death spiral: nukes create steam — spin turbine — make electricity is, SONGS’ eternal problem: the process, is the problem. The “process” eats pipes, until they crack, releasing radioactivity out to the world beyond. Here, that’s — San Clemente, Camp Pendleton, greater Orange County, North San Diego, reaching Riverside and LA County’s. Millions upon millions of people.

Thankfully today, SONGS is turned off due to its compromised pipes. And the one not leaking is dangerously rotting too. SONGS’ calls it “thinning.” Rotting pipes, barely 2-years old. SONGS’ plumbing’s gone FUBAR.

And SONGS, is all plumbing. Miles upon miles of pipe. Layered, twisted, turning, overhead, underfoot, buried and exposed. Pipes, pipes, pipes — cracking. This should come as no surprise. SONGS was warned repeatedly, its new metal alloys, shipped here by Mitsubishi, would never take the heat. With SONGS’ tens of thousands of new-pipes compromised, what about SONGS tangle of 40-year old pipe? Obvious conclusion: SONGS must never, ever, be restarted.

SONGS’ pipe cancer cannot be cured. One bad pipe leads to another, and another, and pretty soon BLAMMO! Followed by mass evacuation of our Spanish Village by the sea, never to return. So what would you rather have: no SONGS, or no San Clemente? We know we can live without SONGS. It’s turned off, and our lights are on. But life without San Clemente is unthinkable, though not beyond impossible. Anyone who wants SONGS back on is crazy beyond all description.

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