Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
On today’s show Carry Kim speaks with special guest Torgen Johnson, an urban planner and community activist from coastal San Diego County here to discuss the stranded nuclear waste situation at the now closed San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station located just a short drive south of Los Angeles. Nuclear waste has been described by Greenpeace’s Michael Stothard as “the most destructive and indestructible waste in history.” Torgen will shed some light on how we can remain safe nevertheless.
Since it was closed for safety violastions in 2012, the dangers of San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station (SONGS) between Orange County and San Diego have only continued to loom. Listen to this EcoJustice Radio interview with activists from Public Watchdogs explain how the nuclear waste being buried on the beach poses serious dangers to California.
According to a former Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chief, the beach in front of San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station could become a permanent nuclear waste dump. Learn why Edison’s program of storing deadly nuclear waste on the beach is not a “temporary” plan. And cartoonist Jerry Collamer weighs in.
Toonman Collamer opines: Work crews transferring radioactive spent fuel (nuclear waste) at the San Onofre nuclear plant from cooling pools into dry storage discovered a loose bolt inside one of the canisters, prompting Southern California Edison to temporarily halt the relocation effort. — Los Angeles Times
San Onofre Nuclear Plant, on the coast of California, is busy building a nuclear waste dump for 1,600 tons of spent fuel on a bluff overlooking the Pacific. Most U.S. nuclear power facilities store highly radioactive waste in thin-walled canisters (mostly 1/2-inch thick) that both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Department of Energy (DOE) admit cannot be inspected (on the outside or inside), cannot be maintained, repaired, and can crack and leak in the short-term.
The fate of a proposed nuclear waste facility near the Canadian shores of Lake Huron is left to the “democratic process” within a small Ontario nuke-dependent town, while failing to consult the 40 million people whose drinking water could be affected.
San Onofre’s nuclear reactors are permanently shut down. However, Southern California Edison has left tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste that will remain on site for decades, if not longer. San Onofre’s spent fuel contains 89 times the amount of radiation (Cesium-137) released from Chernobyl. What is being done to rectify this situation?