Thursday, December 31, 2015

Re: SONGS story to air (my response to David Victor)

Here's my opinion of Mr. Victor's management of Southern California Edison's Citizen's Engagement Panel, prompted by his dressing-down of a local reporter over an upcoming news item (expected to be aired this evening).

Best regards,

Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California USA

Postscript: Here is the news story on the internet:

http://bit.ly/1UiNzcI



Mr. Victor,

Outside your ivory tower, today was a work day for most working-class people. And the news never sleeps.

It's a lot like rust in that respect -- something that should concern you greatly, since you are helping "authorize" (although you claim to have no "authority" and no power) the storage of extremely large quantities of extremely poisonous, extremely delicate, extremely "hot" (radioactively and thermally) nuclear waste in our midst (in rust-prone "stainless" steel containers).

The waste is dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years and could remain at San Onofre for centuries (or longer). You say you want it moved out of here, of course, but that's not the reality. And you've done nothing to prevent a catastrophic release at Diablo Canyon, having learned nothing about how much LESS dangerous nuclear waste is even just a few years after the reactor is shut down. Can you imagine being responsible for something that is a thousand times more dangerous than spent fuel, and a thousand times more likely to suffer an accident? That's the sorry situation at Diablo Canyon, but you've said nothing to them about what a mess you have on your hands here -- a mess that grows every day in San Luis Obispo, but fortunately, is no longer growing here.

My humble opinion, having attended (and filmed) many of the CEP meetings, and watched all but one of the rest of them, is that you were picked for the job because someone at Southern California Edison was sure you would do their bidding. And they have no intention of getting rid of you, I'm sure of that.

From early on, you've been cutting off discussions you don't like. From early on, you've helped SCE ignore the fact that by delaying demolition of the reactor site for up to 60 years, SAFSTOR reduces exposure to radiation, for both workers and the public. The cumulative dose (especially to workers) is much higher if we demolish the plant sooner rather than later. But SCE doesn't want to wait, so...neither do you.

SCE wants to move forward, but probably for financial reasons. What's your reason? SCE also has willing workers (who presumably are unaware of the full extent of the dangers). Who knows who they'll be able to find to do that dirty work in the future?

One thing there is unlikely to be in the future is a cheap place to store the waste. Few options are available for long-term storage of the radioactive debris from decommissioning, and those options are becoming more and more rare, and more and more expensive. So Edison certainly feels it's in their best interest to dismantle SanO quickly, but is it in ours (including the workers who eagerly wish to be irradiated)? And what's best for America? To "solve" one nuclear waste problem by creating another one somewhere else?

Google "Cactus Crater Marshall Islands" to learn what a mess nuclear "experts" have made of long-term storage of irradiated debris in the past. The cement dome is cracking, water is leaching in, radionuclides are leaching out, and the radioactive metals dumped in the middle of the lagoon are being brought to the surface for scrap by poor natives, and then sold to unscrupulous buyers who recycle the metal into everyday things.

So even the broken-up radioactive cement -- and the dust -- will have to be guarded for centuries! And you're in charge. Can't work holidays? Somebody's got to do it.

But the debris from decommissioning, and the worker exposures during the process, are minor worries compared to thinking about the spent fuel. 365 days a year -- for what is essentially an eternity (thousands of years), it will have to be guarded. Someone will have to not be with their families, not just holidays, but day and night, 24/7, as long as it's here and probably a lot longer than that. In thin casks, in a corrosive environment (our beach).

You say that the spent fuel is "just one of many issues" and evidently don't seem to grasp that it's almost the ONLY issue.

Every day that waste sits here, it's vulnerable to earthquakes, tsunamis, airplane strikes (accidental or otherwise), terrorist attacks, and decaying, cracking, embrittling metallurgical issues. For a couple of hours every three months, you control a room full of people, most of whom haven't got any idea of the biological consequences of their decisions. Nor are they aware that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is practically clueless about what condition the cement will be in, or the metals. Nor does the NRC know of any way of inspecting the casks on the inside -- or much of the outside. They know of no way of burrowing below the cement base to check on the condition of the Holtec Honeycomb-Style Waste Storage Pits without risking structural damage, water intrusion damage, etc.. Cement experts weren't invited to your CEP meetings, but they were invited to speak at some NRC hearings this past summer (which is how I know the NRC is practically clueless). I don't think you were in attendance then, nor, as far as I can tell, are you at most of the NRC hearings on San Onofre issues (I attend (and record) as many of them as possible). You certainly don't speak up if you do attend.

Holtec has decided not to use reinforced concrete overpacks in the spent fuel "islands" (ISFSIs) they want SCE to buy (with ratepayer money, of course). No demolition experts were invited to the CEP to knock holes in that decision!

You never allow enough time for public comment, and it's far too rigidly controlled. If a lot of people show up, you act like you're running some sort of government hearing and cut down the minutes each person gets to speak. You actually have used the lamest excuse of all -- that the room was only rented for so long, and no longer! (The seats are dreadfully uncomfortable in Oceanside, so I guess when the meetings are held there, it's just as well they're short.) SCE can afford better. The CEP chairman should demand it.

Any lost time during the "main" portion of the meeting invariably comes out of the public comment period at the end. Panelists will not respond to questions they don't like -- just like a government hearing.

You act like you think you're king of something -- and you are: You're king of the most deadly substance in California. Your efforts are a major factor in determining how that deadly waste will be guarded -- or not -- for the next 300 years -- or longer.

You're forcing it down our throats. And don't say it's not your fault that the waste is (still) here. I've attended more than 20 years of hearings on San Onofre. Never saw you at one before the plant closed. So you had decades to help shut the plant down sooner, knowing -- as we all knew, who bothered to look -- that there was no place to put the waste once the plant closed. So yes, of course it's your fault as much as anybody's.

In short, you've done little since the beginning except push SCE's agenda -- and you ignore criticism. Regarding the upcoming NBC news item, it's very specifically concerned about statistical shenanigans Southern California Edison has apparently been playing for years -- that directly relate to their ability to properly and safely dismantle a nuclear power plant! Specifically, the allegation is that they co-mingle measured samples from highly contaminated areas with measurements from lightly contaminated areas in order to achieve a passing level in the NRC's far-too-lenient allowable releases. Such behavior leaves a lot of room for bias, if not outright cover-up of accidental large releases. It's a serious allegation which evidence clearly suggests was happening.

So I find it strange that as head of the Citizen's Engagement Panel, you would have no comment yourself!

Except, of course, that all this was to be expected. The very purpose of the CEP has been, and IS, to block activists from "controlling" the conversation. With your efforts the CEP has done far better than SCE, NRC or NEI could ever have imagined -- SanO's public participation system for decommissioning a reactor is being held up nationwide by the nuclear industry and even the NRC as a great example of how to do it right! You've even traveled across the country to talk about it, haven't you? (The only time you've spoken at an NRC event, as far as I can recall. Correct me if it's what bothers you about this letter, of course. Was it NEI you spoke to? Or both?)

In the two years during which you've almost completely controlled the post-near-apocalyptic-steam-generator-failure discussion about San Onofre's terrifying legacy of nuclear waste (pun intended), you've accomplished nothing that has helped get the waste removed, and blocked activist's attempts to get better, thicker dry casks and stronger cement overpacks (steel reinforced, for starters, with drainage systems for jet fuel to be removed in well under 20 minutes).

Citizens attempting to work with SCE through the CEP have found it a fruitless endeavor in large part due to your attitude towards opinions you don't share. You've listened to nuclear industry representatives for many hours -- not experts (except Dr. Singh, of course) but merely salesmen -- tell bald-faced lies to the CEP panelists and said nothing. But you control the conversation immediately when any activist -- or even other panelists -- try to speak out on any subject you don't agree with.

Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California USA



At 12:05 AM 12/31/2015 +0000, David G. Victor wrote:
>Dear JW August

>
>At 11:14am this morning you sent me an email requesting comment from me and the Community Engagement Panel on a story that, I gather, your station has already completed and intends to air tomorrow evening. Barely two hours later, at 1:01pm, you sent an email to 39 people (to which I am replying all) that elliptically suggests that the Community Engagement Panel (which I chair) has failed to comment. That is an extraordinary claim that has no basis in fact nor does it reflect any reasonable standard for professional news reporting.

>
>Nearly the entire nation (myself included) is on vacation this week and we are not sitting next to our email, ignoring our families waiting to respond to your random requests for information. You have been working on this story for months and yet you demand, in the middle of a holiday with no advance warning, responses to a complicated story for which the facts really matter. And your offer a schedule that allows no realistic opportunity to do a thorough review of all the materials and solicit feedback from a wide array of sources so that we can help provide to the public truly accurate information about the decommissioning process. I saw your earlier (Sept 22, 2015) story and was deeply disturbed by your reliance upon unnamed expert sources as well as on-camera interviews with individuals who are engaged in other legal actions that clearly raise questions about the reliability of their information. For such reasons I would want to be doubly careful before commenting that I had seen all the materials you allege to have on hand and read the full reports—not just pluck phrases out of context here and there. My interest is in accuracy—not sensatiionalism.

>
>Your email to me this morning referred to earlier requests for information on 11 December and 18 December. Yet those emails were addressed “To Whom it May Concern” and sent to a list of people (copying me) with sprawling, unfocused questions that referred to unnamed “experts” regarding how "SCE does damage control.” You also demanded to know if SCE or the Navy were “lying.” These questions are the stuff of gotcha campaigns and not a serious, focused and professional exchange of information aimed at obtaining the truth. Moreover, those questions seemed to be addressed to SCE and other officials on your email list—not to me. You should not,, in any way, pretend that because I happened to be copied on those messages, which were not addressed to me, that I or the Community Engagement Panel has been unresponsive. If you report that in your new story you will be reporting information that is willfully inaccurate.

>
>The Community Engagement Panel is not a watchdog agency. It does not investigate SCE, NRC or any other body that has formal decision making and regulatory responsibilities at the plant. Nor is our job to defend or promote those organizations. We are a group of 18 volunteers who are providing a conduit of information. We help provide SCE with information about what concerns the public—informmation that has led to an array of tangible changes in how SCE is implementing its decommissioning process. And we help provide the public with information on the process of decommissioning—including information that iss often steeped in jargon and technical detail that we help translate so that it is accessible to everyone. We are particularly focused on the plant itself whereas much of your reporting seems to be focused on events back in the 1980s on the Mesa site—across the road from thee main plant. Mindful of our role as a conduit for information, we have circulated links to your earlier reports and discussed them and also circulated copies of responses from SCE to your reporting. And we will do the same as new stories appear. Beyond that, I don’t see that there is a specific role for us in your story.

>
>With best wishes for the New Year,

>
>David Victor

>
>
>
>From: "August, J.W (NBCUniversal)" <JW.August@nbcuni.com>
>Date: Wednesday, December 30, 2015 at 1:01 PM
>To: Maureen Brown <Maureen.Brown@sce.com>, "Saunders, Lee H CIV NAVFAC SW" <lee.saunders@navy.mil>, "pendleton.media@usmc.mil" <pendleton.media@usmc.mil>, "OPA4.Resource@nrc.com" <OPA4.Resource@nrc.com>, "Donovan, Stephanie" <SDonovan@semprautilities.com>, "info@coastkeeper.org" <info@coastkeeper.org>, David Victor <david.victor@ucsd.edu>, Dan Stetson <dstetson@ocean-institute.org>, "lisa.bartlett@ocgov.com" <lisa.bartlett@ocgov.com>, "Smith, Steve" <steve.smith@10news.com>, "Lightfoot, Anita" <Anita.Lightfoot@sdcounty.ca.gov>, "August, J.W (NBCUniversal)" <JW.August@nbcuni.com>, "Walsh, Lynn (NBCUniversal)" <Lynn.walsh@nbcuni.com>, Michael Aguirre <maguirre@amslawyers.com>, Bart Ziegler <bziegler@toxco.net>, Ace Hoffman <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>, Daniel O Hirsch <dhirsch1@cruzio.com>, Vinod Arora <vinnie48in@gmail.com>, Mark Sauer <MSAUER@kpbs.org>, "pfinn@kpbs.org" <pfinn@kpbs.org>, "tom@sdnews.com" <tom@sdnews.com>, "julie@sdnews.com" <julie@sdnews.com>, Jamie Court <jamie@consumerwatchdog.org>, Jamie Hampton <jamie@sdcoastkeeper.org>, "travis@sdcoastkeeper.org" <travis@sdcoastkeeper.org>, Diane Takvorian <Diane@environmentalhealth.org>, "Adams, Andie (NBCUniversal)" <Andie.Adams@nbcuni.com>, "Galindo, Ramon (NBCUniversal)" <Ramon.Galindo@nbcuni.com>, noverflo <noverflo@aol.com>, "harvey@consumerwatchdog.org" <harvey@consumerwatchdog.org>, JW August <jwaugustsd@gmail.com>, "Giametta, Salvatore" <Salvatore.Giametta@sdcounty.ca.gov>, "Ernie Cowan (Ernie@nsdcar.com)" <Ernie@nsdcar.com>, "Goldstein, Daniel" <dgoldstein@marketwatch.com>, PEACE RESOURCE CENTER <caroljahnkow@gmail.com>, "maryannepintar@gmail.com" <maryannepintar@gmail.com>, Bree Walker <breewalker2263@gmail.com>, "2263@gmail.com" <2263@gmail.com>, "anchor@studio45.tv" <anchor@studio45.tv>
>Subject: SONGS story to air
>
>As of this date, December 30, 2015, neither of the principals in this story, SCE & SDGE, have commented.
>The first request for comment was e mailed on December 11th, a follow up on the 18th of December. The request for specific comments to allegations is shown below and was sent to both SDGE and SCE as the responsible parties on the lease of the SONGS
>property.
> Of the agencies copied on this request for comment, only the NRC provided any feedback.
>The Community Engagement Panel, which is tasked with being the public’s eyes and ears on the shutdown of SONGS, has also been asked for comment. Several members of that panel are included in this e mail.
>You will find in the attachments with this e mail the criticisms of our original story.
>That story can be seen at:
>http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Documents-Detail-How-Nuclear-Material-Was-Handled-at-San-Onofre-328292351.html
>The updated story on the SONGS land will air in the 6pm broadcast tomorrow night on KNSD in San Diego. In addition, on the KNSD website will be the companion story with links provided for
>documents used in producing this story.
>
>
>Here is the request for comment:
>From: "August, J.W (NBCUniversal)" <JW.August@nbcuni.com>
>Date: December 18, 2015 at 5:15:16 AM PST
>To: JW August <jwaugustsd@gmail.com>
>Cc: "maureen.brown@sce.com" <maureen.brown@sce.com>, "lee.saunders@navy.mil" <lee.saunders@navy.mil>, "pendletonmedia@usmc.mil" <pendletonmedia@usmc.mil>, "OPA4.Resource@nrc.gov" <OPA4.Resource@nrc.gov>, "OPA.Resource@nrc.gov" <OPA.Resource@nrc.gov>, "sdonovan@semprautilities.com" <sdonovan@semprautilities.com>, "info@coastkeeper.org" <info@coastkeeper.org>, "david.victor@ucsd.edu" <david.victor@ucsd.edu>, "dstetson@ocean-institute.org" <dstetson@ocean-institute.org>, "Lisa.Bartlett@ocgov.com" <Lisa.Bartlett@ocgov.com>, Steve Schmidt <steve.schmidt@sdcounty.ca.gov>, "anita.lightfoot@sdcounty.ca.gov" <anita.lightfoot@sdcounty.ca.gov>, "Walsh, Lynn (NBCUniversal)" <Lynn.walsh@nbcuni.com>
>Subject: Re: 2nd request for comment on KNSD report on SONGS, second story in series
>On Dec 11, 2015, at 3:48 PM, JW August <jwaugustsd@gmail.com> wrote:
>To whom it may concern
>We are preparing to â€&lsqauo;broadcast and webcast a story regarding the SONGS plant â€&lsqauo;in the near future regarding SDGE/SCE lease with the US Navy and the condition of the land around the plant that was under the control of SCE/SDGE partnership.
>Our initial story resulted inâ€&lsqauo;no response from SDGE and SCE did not provide any specific comments for the story even though they had a advance copy of the story and ample time to respond. We were referred to the SCE website press releases andvideo press conferences where various unrelated comments and statements were made. Eventually SCE’s public information â€&lsqauo;office did provide a more through response â€&lsqauo;accusing KNSD of scare tactics, shoddy reporting, calling the story sensational and inaccurate. The utility requested corrections to be made to the original story. For the record, â€&lsqauo;KNSD never did a correction as requested by SCE â€&lsqauo; because we believe our sources and the information we have compiled are accurate and factual given the information we have.It was â€&lsqauo;ten days after the story aired before the utility did respond to specific issues and we note the letter was sent not just to KNSD but throughout the stakeholders community. One of our experts told us this was the typical way SCE does damage control. Would you care to comment?
>â€&lsqauo;In regards to the story now in production, a key â€&lsqauo;element in the story is a statement from SCE contained in their letter criticizing the coverage; “There is no current radiological contamination on the Mesa property we plan to return to the Navy, as you implied; all Mesa survey readings are normal background radiation levels”â€&lsqauo;That is from the letter sent to KNSD from Maureen Brown of the SCE.â€&lsqauo;However, a response from a FOIA request â€&lsqauo;made by KNSD â€&lsqauo;to the United States Navy in regards to the Mesa â€&lsqauo;radiation â€&lsqauo;
>readings says, quoting from Mr. David Bixler of the Engineering Command, “The Mesa site may be contaminated from activities conducted during SCE’s occupancy and use” This letter is dated August 20, 2015â€&lsqauo;, just days before our story would air. â€&lsqauo;
>
>
>Was the Navy lying? â€&lsqauo;We are also reporting when SCE employees gathered samplesâ€&lsqauo;to check for radioactive levels from various locations on the Mesaâ€&lsqauo;, theymixed them together . According to our expert Dan Hirsch â€&lsqauo;this is a common practice by utilities when sampling to “average them together and try to find a way to force the numbers lower than they should be” We also reference in our new story an incident from NRC inspection records where contaminated soil, asphalt and concrete located close to a containment structure was moved to the Mesa. Sometime later it was removed—390 fifty five gallon druums were shipped off site. â€&lsqauo;Can â€&lsqauo;you tell me where the drums disposed of properly? Where were they shipped?
>
>â€&lsqauo;SCE's Media Relations Project Manager complained about our producer/reporters lack of knowledge about basic science saying “It appears your reporters and producers are unaware that radiation exists in everyday life” However after reviewing our documents and the SCE letter Mr. Hirsch said “the arguments that were made about radiation levels we are exposed to is completely irrelevant” He also added this sharp reaction is the typical â€&lsqauo;method of operation for SCE when they are questioned about their practices, saying SCE views this as a "public relations problem not a health problem."
>Please feel free to comment to one or all of these statements.
>Thank you
>
>cid:image001.jpg@01D0623B.5ADA68C0
>
>J W August
>Investigative Producer
>o 619.578.0214 | c 619.992.2210
>225 Broadway, San Diego CA 92101
>
>
>
>
>
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Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, California USA
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Email: ace [at] acehoffman.org
Founder & Owner, The Animated Software Company



Wednesday, November 25, 2015

New videos: Oral Histories and presentations of atomic veterans...

November 25th, 2015

Dear Readers,

I recently posted nine videos on You-Tube which were recorded October 24-26, 2015 at an Atomic Veterans Reunion event in Las Vegas, Nevada. The event was held at the National Atomic Veterans Museum, near the strip. URLs for all nine videos are shown below.

The videos feature three Oral History interviews and more than half a dozen presentations by atomic veterans. These are complete interviews and presentations, minimally edited (except for extensive audio cleanup, so that audience and moderator comments could be heard).

One of the most interesting presentations was by Peter M. Livingston, who proposes several suggestions about what to do with spent nuclear fuel. He believes (and has numerous credentials and patents to back up his claims) that America can invent a "gamma ray photon" laser which will be able to reduce the fission product content of nuclear waste (it can't do anything about the plutonium, unfortunately). This would actually produce additional useful energy from the fuel waste, while using up the most dangerous byproduct of nuclear fission: The fission products.

Dr. Livingston also has concepts for using spent fuel in pools for creating: "a surprising cornucopia of chemicals, such as alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, ketenes, carbon monoxide" and other chemicals from the radiochemical reduction of carbon dioxide using gamma radiation emitting from spent fuel -- at a profit. Spent fuel is "one to ten million times" more radioactive than a medical cobalt-60 source.

All the presentations were fascinating to listen to and I highly recommend checking out the whole set. Some of the storytellers are old and talk slowly, some talk about some pretty mundane things sometimes, but I still suggest you view (or just listen) to each one in its entirety (total a little over five hours).

Taken together, they present a picture of an important part of history that is becoming impossible to find eyewitnesses to. These men watched, between them, scores of nuclear blasts. They laid cables for tests, stood in trenches near the blast, sent out reports on the telegraph wire...one even parachuted into a radioactive drop zone within about an hour after the detonation!

Included is also one World War Two veteran's story presented at the same event, about landing on the beach in Normandy and the next four months he spent on that same beach, often under fire from German planes, never showering the entire four months, unloading equipment for the war machine (including my father) which was marching across Europe.

You'll cry, you'll laugh, you'll disagree with something, you'll be horrified by many things, but you'll be glad you viewed these tapes of these amazing gentlemen, who each just randomly ended up having something to do with The Bomb (or, in Gaetano Benza's case, ended up on the blood-soaked, body-littered beaches of Normandy on D-Day).

Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California USA (images added 2025)
Videographer/interviewer/film editor

Videos from National Atomic Testing Museum Atomic Veterans Reunion 2015:

Wally Lyons (Oral History and Presentation, 33:28):
(Signal Corps)
https://youtu.be/FEklHAhkUto

Roger Stenerson (Presentation, 37:14):
(Measured radiation effects of half a dozen blasts)
https://youtu.be/PmkoyQuqVjQ

Gaetano Benza (Presentation, 14:32):
(D-Day landings)
https://youtu.be/241p_4qKP3U

Bud Hinshaw (Presentation, 17:39):
(Airplane mechanic)
https://youtu.be/j8rxeq_5Xtw

Al Tseu (Oral History, 49:57):
(82nd Airborne)
https://youtu.be/e91MeIF0kvY

Al Tseu (Presentation, 33:47):
https://youtu.be/9CwBeNvCf_g

Peter Livingston (Oral History and Presentation, 55:41):
(Atomic blast EMP and x-ray studies)
https://youtu.be/EuNmZvdilys

Leo "Bud" Feurt (Presentation, 13:34):
(Saw dozens of blasts while stationed on the U.S.S. Boxer aircraft carrier)
https://youtu.be/FlDayvO9z_k

Al Gettier and Larrie Adams (Presentations, 1:02:14):
(Enewetok cleanup)
https://youtu.be/NT3kypIX-pI


Atomic Bomb Test Veteran Max M. Miller talks about his experience witnessing a test
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Zg-coKQtBI&t=12s

Bonus video!
Tuskegee Airmen Tribute February 20, 2016 at Palm Springs Air Museum, Palm Springs, CA
https://youtu.be/1S-PB3vpxf0

###


Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, California USA
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Email: ace [at] acehoffman.org
Founder & Owner, The Animated Software Company



Friday, November 20, 2015

Darrell Issa's change of heart on the intractable problem of nuclear waste...

November 20th, 2015

Representative Darrell Issa used to think nuclear waste was simply not a problem. Store it in pools. Store it in dry casks. Ship it to Yucca Mountain (some day). No worries.

Then after San Onofre (in his own district) shut down permanently, he had a change of heart. His solution?

Give it to someone else!

Below is Issa's press release about his proposed bill on nuclear waste. The first sentence of the first paragraph is a lie, and it goes downhill from there.

Issa claims that Yucca Mountain "has been stalled for years due to political posturing."

In reality, Yucca Mountain is STILL moving forward, albeit VERY slowly (there is a closing for comments period at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission today, for instance, regarding groundwater issues). The real problems (potential groundwater poisoning being just one of many) that have stalled Yucca Mountain are NOT political: Some of the problems are technical, such as the as-yet-undesigned and untested titanium drip shields proposed for the water intrusion problems they discovered after decades of thinking the place was always nearly totally dry. Drip shields might help, but other problems are technically unsolvable, such as the volcanic and earthquake activity in the general vicinity of Yucca Mountain. For those problems, the "experts" are attempting to show that catastrophic accidents will be unlikely -- but they can't make them impossible.

Very few Nevadans want Yucca Mountain. Nevadans have every right not to want a nuclear waste dump in their state, where over 800 nuclear bomb tests occurred, poisoning a 680-square mile area of the state.

Of course, every other state in the country feels the same way. Western states, fearing a push from Congress, have all signed a pact that prohibits a nuclear waste dump in any western state -- unless the governor of that state agrees to accept the waste. It's a large loophole in a pact of questionable legality in the first place, but so far no permanent solution is being seriously considered anywhere in America. And certainly, no one could possibly get elected governor of Nevada on a platform supporting Yucca Mountain.

The second sentence of Darrell Issa's nuclear waste proposal is equally absurd. Issa claims that the Yucca Mountain failure has "littered communities across the nation with high level nuclear waste." Yes, the waste exists, but the waste was created because those same communities (including mine) allowed nuclear reactors to be built before a waste solution existed, on the assumption that one would eventually exist. At 99 reactors around the country, waste problems still grow and some day will need to be faced. Or ran from.

There is one part of Issa's second sentence that is correct: Current storage is, indeed, in "less than ideal conditions." The waste is stored in thin (1/2 inch to 5/8ths inch thick) stainless steel canisters. There are no earthen berms to protect the waste from aircraft impacts. There is no way to monitor the contents of the canisters for degradation. The canisters themselves cannot be adequately inspected for cracks that might form over time. The canisters and the fuel will both degrade over time, becoming more and more difficult to transport as we wait.

The next paragraph of Issa's statement introduces Issa's "creative" solution. It is indeed creative -- so is all fiction. The fiction here is that there would be a "volunteering" region that will want to host an interim storage site. What Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission determined was that laws would need to be drastically changed for such a place to exist, because surrounding larger communities would object, state governments would object, and everyone along the transportation routes would object. So the BRC suggested making undemocratic laws that would force people to accept the consequences if some very tiny Indian tribe, corporation, or township wanted to take the waste. So much for being a democratic nation.

The fourth paragraph calls Yucca Mountain "our best bet." That phrasing is particularly interesting because it admits that nuke waste storage solutions are ALL a gamble. Then that paragraph says Issa's proposal would not take away funding from the Yucca Mountain plan, because it would only take away the interest from that funding. But since monetary inflation is an ongoing fact of life, the reality is that would make the Nuclear Waste Fund smaller and smaller in terms of real dollars.

If Issa wants to fund an Interim storage site, he should find the money elsewhere and not rob the Nuclear Waste Fund of the interest it can accrue (which will probably not be enough to keep up with inflation anyway).

In the last paragraph of Issa's statement, he admits to some of the reasons that storing nuclear waste at San Onofre (and more than 100 other sites around the country) is "not an option." But Issa utterly fails to recognize the real problem: Operating reactors. There is no such thing as a "permanent" solution as long as you are still making nuclear waste!

If -- magically -- you removed ALL the waste that could be removed (that is, if an interim storage site existed) from operating reactors right now, it would do little to actually reduce the risk, because operating reactors are at least 1,000 times more likely (perhaps 10,000 times more likely) to have a catastrophic accident than spent fuel, per unit of time, while the reactor is operating. However, over decades and centuries, the spent fuel is, of course, far more likely to be catastrophically released, because sooner or later (perhaps millennia, perhaps tomorrow), something is bound to go wrong at every nuclear waste dump.

Even if Yucca Mountain opened today, it would take about 30 years to fill, during which time more waste than will fit there will be created, and all the 2200+ dry casks that exist now will become more and more embrittled. More than 10,000 dry casks will be needed just for the fuel that already exists -- plus another ~10,000 dry casks for the spent fuel that will be created during the next 30 years, which will have nowhere to go even if Yucca Mountain is built! And Yucca Mountain has an enormous number of "unknowns" regarding what will happen to it in 500 years, or 1000, or 10,000, or 100,000, or a million years. (Nevada submitted almost 300 "contentions" to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy regarding Yucca Mountain, none of which have been resolved.)

Perhaps the worst thing about Issa's "best bet" -- Yucca Mountain -- is that the nuclear waste will not be retrievable after 300 years. That sounds good? It isn't. It means that IF a way to neutralize the waste were to be invented we wouldn't be able to retrieve the waste in order to process it! For example, this author recently talked to an expert with more than 50 years in the nuclear business, who says all we really need is a "gamma ray photon laser" which, according to the expert (Peter M. Livingston, Ph.D.), might be invented in the coming decades. Dr. Livingston also says there is enough latent, retrievable energy (retrievable with that not-yet-invented "gamma ray photon laser") in the waste we now have to power all of America's energy needs for about 7 years. That's a lot of latent, wasted energy! There have always been proposals for solving the nuclear waste problem, and after 70 years of creating waste, none of them have worked. Dr. Livingston's might not work either -- the gamma ray photon laser hasn't been invented yet -- but if we bury the waste improperly (as Issa wishes to do at Yucca Mountain), we won't be able to do anything when/if these solutions come to fruition.

Without a proven, working solution, we are risking accidents as big or bigger than Fukushima at every nuclear waste dump. But even if a solution to the waste problem existed, we would still risking a Fukushima or Chernobyl-scale event at every operating reactor because there is no such thing as a fail-safe nuclear reactor.

Darrell Issa should focus on closing the still-operating reactors in America (and especially near his district, in California and Arizona) if he wants to truly help solve America's growing nuclear waste debacle. He should get out of the nuclear waste guessing game. Operating reactors present an enormous risk to all Americans, and are continuously making the waste problem bigger and harder to solve.

Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA

---------------------------------------------------------------
From:
http://issa.house.gov/press-releases/2015/09/issa-sponsors-bill-to-create-interim-storage-site-for-nuclear-waste/

Issa Cosponsors Bill to Create Interim Storage Site for Nuclear Waste

September 29, 2015

WASHINGTON, DC ­ Congressman Darrell Issa (CA-49) today released a statement following the introduction of the Interim Consolidated Storage Act:

"Progress on moving the nation's nuclear waste to the designated site at Yucca Mountain has been stalled for years due to political posturing. This failure of government to act has littered communities across the nation with high level nuclear waste stored in less than ideal conditions, including at the closed San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in my own district.

"The Interim Consolidated Storage Act provides for a creative solution to a critical infrastructure need. The legislation would pair a region that is volunteering to host an interim waste storage facility with communities around the country that have nuclear waste demanding a better storage solution.

"The bill would neither replace Yucca Mountain ­ which remains our best bet for a permanent nuclear waste storage facility ­ nor would it take from Yucca Mountain's funding, taking only from the interest that has accrued to the Nuclear Waste Fund.

"Maintaining the status quo is not an option. The waste from the closed San Onofre nuclear plant sits near an active fault line, adjacent to the heavily-trafficked Interstate 5 and the Pacific Ocean, and sandwiched between densely-populated Orange and San Diego Counties. This is just one example out of 120, nationwide. Continuing to do nothing while the can is perpetually kicked down the road is no longer an option, and the Interim Consolidated Storage Act is a decisive, tangible step to circumvent political and bureaucratic gridlock, and it makes Americans safer in the process."

###

============================================
A useful video for Darrell Issa to view:
============================================

How I Became An Anti-Nuclear Activist (Dr. Gordon Edwards):
https://youtu.be/AYJUSlRyd44
or:
https://youtu.be/M-JdQL59HYE

=============================================
Beyond Nuclear web page on Yucca Mountain:
=============================================

http://www.beyondnuclear.org/yucca-mountain/

=============================================
U.S. Government web site to go to, to submit comments about Yucca Mountain:
=============================================

http://www.regulations.gov/#!home

Search for: NRC-2015-0051

=============================================
Contact information for the author of this newsletter:
=============================================

-----------------------------------------

Ace Hoffman
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Carlsbad, CA
Email: ace [at] acehoffman.org

----------------------------------------

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Recent AP news item continues the fiction that the nuclear waste problem can be solved.

Dear Readers,

There are several inaccuracies in Dave Gram's recent AP article on nuclear waste funding (the full article is shown below (bottom)).

Many of the "mistakes" are seen regularly in news articles written by pro-nuclear "science" writers who accept the basic (erroneous) idea that the world needs nuclear power -- so somehow, we are going to find a way to deal with the problems it causes.

Here are some comments about five errors in the article:

>>>>>>>>>
(1) "It was not envisioned they [ratepayers] also would have to pay for indefinite storage of spent fuel on the roughly 100 nuclear plant sites around the country."
>>>>>>>>>>

It certainly was obvious that someone would have to pay for it. The problem of storing nuclear waste indefinitely was described decades ago as "intractable." Anyone could have done the math and seen that there could never be enough storage space on earth, or safe enough storage locations, for nuclear power to be practical or economical. Ionizing radiation destroys ANY chemical bond that exists in nature. Therefore it can (and will) destroy ANY container you put it in. Ionizing radiation destroys materials: steel alloys, weld joints, molecular structures (including DNA strands) at the atomic level, and even at the sub-atomic level. Radiation accelerates embrittlement, resulting in cracks, leaks, and environmental damage. This was all known more than half a century ago (see quote from a 1979 NYTimes article (below, top)).

>>>>>>>>>>
(2) "Nuclear industry spokespeople, government officials and industry critics agree the retirement fund raids have been triggered by the failure to date of the U.S. Department of Energy to open a permanent disposal site for spent nuclear fuel. "
>>>>>>>>>>

Perhaps they say that, but it is not the whole truth. The U.S. DOE's failure was due to the fact that Yucca Mountain, like every other site on earth, is not an appropriate place to store nuclear waste. For one thing, Yucca Mountain is riddled with cracks that water can seep through. For another, it's in a volcanically-active area. And sometimes, when it rains it pours there -- witness the recent Beatty, Nevada fire that burst out due to water seepage at a long-closed low-level nuclear waste dump a few miles away from the proposed Yucca Mountain site.

>>>>>>>>>>
(3) "For years, the government had been planning a disposal site at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, but that plan has been scuttled by a lack of funding from Congress."
>>>>>>>>>>

Again, this is only part of the whole situation. The plan was delayed for more than two decades after problems first started to arise. After 30 years and about as many billions of dollars, Congress finally decided to let all the scientists (10,000+) go do something more productive somewhere else. By the time Congress canceled funding, probably 98% of the Yucca Mountain scientists had little or nothing to do anyway. But a small % of the scientists were stuck on difficult problems, such as designing huge, heavy titanium drip shields to try to get around the water intrusion problem for a few hundred years. Another small percentage had problems for which there were simply no good (or half-good) solutions. Those scientists were instead busily trying to calculate the likelihood of unstoppable catastrophic events (such as earthquakes and volcanoes), and had to try to prove those events weren't very frequent. Proving that...proved very difficult indeed!

These were the real show-stoppers that caused Congress to finally give up. Nobody simply backed out. Instead, the futility of moving forward became inescapable. (The so-called "Blue Ribbon Commission" accomplished nothing, and only called for abrogating people's right to stop a "temporary" or "interim" nuclear waste dump near their house (but that's another story).)

One more factor caused the Yucca Mountain project to be all but abandoned: The nation unwittingly accepted an alternative solution that is relatively cheap to start with, but can't last very long, and is vulnerable to terrorist attacks and numerous environmental events -- if it doesn't manage to fall apart all by itself first: Dry cask storage.

>>>>>>>>>>
(4) "Entergy Corp., closed the plant at the end of last year because it was becoming less competitive against electricity generated with cheap natural gas."
>>>>>>>>>>

Actually, natural gas is "cheap" because renewables are even cheaper, so natural gas has to be relatively cheap to compete (it could be even cheaper, but doesn't have to be to find a market). More importantly, even cheap, inadequate solutions to the problem of nuclear waste disposal are not being included in nuclear power plant calculations of their so-called "operating costs." Nor are cancers in the community (now confirmed by several studies). Nor is the shared cost (that all nuclear power plants globally should be paying) of all previous radiation releases: Chernobyl, Fukushima, Santa Susana, Three Mile Island, SL-1 and all the other accidents, large and small, that have happened (plus weapons releases, NASA accidents, hospital waste and so on). The toll on human life from Chernobyl alone is probably already over a million people dead (a number supported by a meta-analysis of tens of thousands of individual studies conducted in Russia after the event).

>>>>>>>>>>
(5) "The spent fuel bottleneck leaves closed and soon-to-close nuclear plants with the prospect that for the indefinite future, they will look like the site of the former Maine Yankee plant."
>>>>>>>>>>

Why only closed and soon-to-close nuclear power plants? All nuclear power plants should be looking at these sorts of problems and costs. If the energy users (customers) had to fully pay for all future nuclear waste storage of the waste generated by their own electricity usage, customers would demand immediate closure because the price would be sky-high. Every dry cask is a catastrophe just waiting to happen, and the fewer any one site is left with, the better.

Dry casks cannot and will not be properly inspected. Dry casks can be cracking from the inside out OR the outside in. The first sign of a crack could be a catastrophic loss of integrity of the entire containment system. Cracks can go from microscopic to through-wall in a matter of months -- or even mere moments -- if the stress on the area with the crack is in the right direction. Welds near support structures are, of course particularly vulnerable and particularly hard -- or impossible -- to inspect. There are now over 2,200 dry casks in America, and enough spent nuclear fuel for more than 10,000. That's a lot of chances for a catastrophic accident somewhere.

It's time to stop making more nuclear waste. There is no such thing as economical -- or safe -- nuclear power.

Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California USA


From NYTimes, 1979:
U.N. Agency Accused of Hiding Data on Hazards in Nuclear Energy:

5/19/1979
New York Times

"An environmental "watchdog" organization has accused the United Nations Environment Program of suppressing its own report on possible health hazards in nuclear energy and the dangers of accident at nuclear-powered installations.
....
"Lack of Disposal Methods

"The [UNEP] report concedes that no adequate permanent disposal method has been devised for highly radioactive wastes, which 'will remain active over immense time scales and, unless continuously isolated, will present dangers to our remote descendants.' It estimates that it would take 10 to 20 years just to determine the feasibility of some 'promising ideas' for disposal."
...


From 2015:
Nuclear plants dip into dismantling funds to pay for waste

By DAVE GRAM

Oct. 25, 2015 1:21 PM EDT

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) ­ With a federal promise to take highly radioactive spent fuel from nuclear plants still unfulfilled, closed reactors are dipping into funds set aside for their eventual dismantling to build waste storage on-site, raising questions about whether there will be enough money when the time comes.

It violates Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules for the plants to take money from their decommissioning trust funds to pay for building the concrete pads and rows of concrete and steel casks where waste is stored after it is cooled in special storage pools. But the NRC is granting exemptions from those rules every time it is asked.

"All of the plants that have permanently shut down in recent years have sought, and been approved for, the use of decommissioning funds for spent fuel storage costs," NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan wrote in an email in response to questions from The Associated Press this past week.

These include the Kewaunee plant in Wisconsin, San Onofre 1 and 2 in California, Crystal River 3 in Florida, and Vermont Yankee in Vernon, in Vermont's southeast corner, which closed at the end of last year. The Zion 1 and 2 reactors in Illinois, which shut down in the late 1990s, had gotten a similar OK to use decommissioning money for spent fuel storage, Sheehan said.

Ratepayers chipped in during nuclear plants' lives to set aside the money it would take eventually to tear down reactors, remove their radioactive components and restore the sites. It was not envisioned they also would have to pay for indefinite storage of spent fuel on the roughly 100 nuclear plant sites around the country.

And long-term, on-site storage of nuclear waste is a bad idea, said Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry executive turned consultant who frequently criticizes the industry.

"You build power plants near water because you have to cool them, and you build nuclear waste storage sites away from water" because of the threat of radioactive materials reaching it, Gundersen said.

"It would be much better to get the stuff underground where terrorists couldn't fly a plane into it," he said.

Nuclear industry spokespeople, government officials and industry critics agree the retirement fund raids have been triggered by the failure to date of the U.S. Department of Energy to open a permanent disposal site for spent nuclear fuel. For years, the government had been planning a disposal site at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, but that plan has been scuttled by a lack of funding from Congress.

That has left reactors redesigning the racks in their spent fuel pools to accommodate more of the waste and expanding into "dry cask" storage, both of which Vermont Yankee did in the years before its owner, Entergy Corp., closed the plant at the end of last year because it was becoming less competitive against electricity generated with cheap natural gas.

The spent fuel bottleneck leaves closed and soon-to-close nuclear plants with the prospect that for the indefinite future, they will look like the site of the former Maine Yankee plant. That plant was permanently shut down in 1997, nearly two decades ago. Today, the reactor is gone, but the site in the coastal town of Wiscasset still features 60 steel canisters encased in concrete that contain the 550 metric tons of spent fuel the plant generated in its 25-year life. The site is guarded 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Vermont Yankee's decommissioning fund already is short enough ­ it contains about half the estimated $1.24 billion cost of dismantling the reactor, removing the waste and restoring the site ­ that the plant plans to follow an NRC-allowed procedure called "SAFSTOR," in which the closed reactor is mothballed for up to 60 years in hopes the fund will grow enough to cover the cost.

Vermont Yankee spokesman Martin Cohn said Entergy had taken out a $145 million line of credit to cover capital costs of building its on-site waste storage. But he said the company is planning for $225 million in security and other operating expenses after the spent fuel is in storage.

Gundersen said Vermont is alone among states in that it is trying to limit raids on the decommissioning fund. This month, Vermont won a ruling from an NRC board that Entergy would have to keep it informed of withdrawals from the fund for specific expenses.

Cohn argued that anyone concerned about the costs of on-site waste storage and how they're being paid should not focus their ire on the industry, NRC or even the Department of Energy. Rather, it is the Congress that has failed to fulfill its decades-old promise that the federal government will take highly radioactive spent fuel off the hands of nuclear plant operators.

###


Quotes collected by Ace Hoffman:
"Nuclear war must be the most carefully avoided topic of general significance in the contemporary world. People are not curious about the details." -- Paul Brians (author; quote is from: Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction)
"When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." -- Sinclair Lewis (first American Nobel Prize winner in Literature, 2.7.1885 - 1.10.1951)
"There is no such thing as a pro-nuclear environmentalist." -- Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa, 1992)
"Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories." -- Sun Tzu (Chinese general b.500 BC)
"Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results." -- Margaret Atwood (Canadian poet/novelist/environmentalist/etc.)
"The sun shows up every day and produces ridiculous amounts of power." -- Elon Musk (5.1.2015)
"The most intolerable reactor of all may be one which comes successfully to the end of its planned life having produced mountains of radioactive waste for which there is no disposal safe from earthquake damage or sabotage." -- A. Stanley Thompson (a pioneer nuclear physicist who later realized the whole situation)
"Any dose is an overdose." -- Dr. John W. Gofman (another pioneer nuclear physicist who saw the light (9.21.1918 - 8.15.2007))
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery." -- Octavia Butler (science fiction writer, 7.22.1947 - 2.24.2006)
"If you want real welfare reform, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.

If you want to reduce poverty, you focus on a good education, good healthcare, and a good job.

If you want a stable middle class, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.

If you want to have citizens who can participate in democracy, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.

And if you want to end the violence, you could build a million new prisons and you could fill them up, but you never end this cycle of violence unless you invest in the health and the skill and the intellect and the character of our children. You focus on a good education, good health care and a good job.

And other than that, I don't feel strongly about anything."

-- Paul Wellstone (US Senator, D-Minnesota, 7.21.1944 - 10.25.2002)


"There are no warlike peoples - just warlike leaders." -- Ralph Bunche (8.7.1903 - 12.9.1971)
"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Officials from the San Onofre nuclear reactor said the warning siren that went off yesterday was just a malfunction and no one should worry. Hey, I worry, if they can't even get the siren to work right, what the hell are they doing with the reactor??" Jay Leno 1/20/10
"Please send this to everyone you know!" -- Ace Hoffman (original collector of the above quotes, January, 2008)


Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, California USA
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Email: ace [at] acehoffman.org
Founder & Owner, The Animated Software Company



Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Welcome to Las Vegas. You're under arrest.

Dear Readers,

Today (October 13, 2015), another old American nuclear reactor announced that it is closing permanently.

Pilgrim opened in 1972 and has been producing nuclear waste ever since. Due to "unprofitable conditions" it will close by 2019, and perhaps much sooner. A wise investor would close it immediately since the risk is not worth ANY possible profit, let alone a loss, but the regional grid operator requires prior notification of voluntary closure, and refueling outages are considered logical times to close nuclear power plants permanently, in order to squeeze the last few dollars of profit out of the reactor.

Across the country, at least 20 reactors are predicted to close over the next decade, mostly because required safety upgrades (such as they are), operating costs, fuel costs, regular maintenance costs, and competitive replacement energy prices (mostly low natural gas prices but also the wonderful low prices for renewables (which will only go even further down as manufacturing capacities ramp up)) -- all add up to one thing: Unprofitability.

Well, whatever it takes, right? Not so fast. Closing 20% of the fleet doesn't solve the nation's biggest liability: Our growing nuclear waste pile. It only slows it down.

The biggest question facing the nation is where to put the waste. What community will take it? What state? Communities around closed reactor sites are especially eager to get their waste removed, but operating reactors want their old waste removed too -- they want a constant stream of removal of old fuel forever. But to where? No one knows.

So the nuclear industry is using activists around the shuttered San Onofre Nuclear (Waste) Generating Station very successfully to try to push the nation towards building an "interim" nuclear waste repository, and/or restarting and then finishing Yucca Mountain, the proposed permanent nuclear waste site in Nevada. For the last 30 years, Yucca Mountain has been the ONLY proposed permanent nuclear waste repository in America. Partly because there really isn't anywhere else that's better. But also because no one wants the waste.

President Obama stopped funding Yucca Mountain research, then he formed a special committee to study alternatives. The so-called "Blue Ribbon Commission" (BRC) came up with nothing: They could not think of any permanent alternative, so instead they proposed changing federal laws to make it easier for a small group of property owners, a tiny township, or a small native American tribe with sovereign land, to build an "interim" waste repository. The laws, which have not yet been completely formulated, would prohibit a state, or any larger community such as a county or nearby large city, from blocking the "interim" storage site. The BRC's proposed new federal laws would also prohibit cities, counties, or states from banning the transport of nuclear waste through their community, on the way to the interim storage location.

In response to the BRC's suggestions, western states formulated a mutual agreement saying they would not allow nuclear waste to be stored in any western state -- unless that state's governor approves it. I have no idea of the legality -- or usefulness -- of the western states' governor's agreement, but it shows how little anyone wants even an "interim" waste repository, let alone, a permanent one.

As plants close around the country, calls for a solution to the problem of nuclear waste storage have intensified tremendously, and will continue to do so. But hold on a minute. First we have to close ALL the reactors. Otherwise, we'll just be enabling them to make more waste.

It was at least six months ago, perhaps more, when I first heard the nuclear industry lavishing praise on Southern California Edison's (SCE's) "Community Engagement Panel" (CEP) as "the way to do it" when interacting with the public during decommissioning. In 2012, San Onofre suddenly closed down permanently, due to poorly-designed replacement steam generators that failed less than a year after installation. Since then, half a dozen other reactors have also shut down, or have announced plans to do so soon. The CEP was initiated about six months after permanent closure was announced. It's headed by a pro-nuclear economist from a local university, and includes a past president of the American Nuclear Society and other nuclear proponents.

The industry is right that it's been very successful, insofar as: Many people (and all the media) around San Onofre -- including once-good activists who were urgently trying to shut down the reactor prior to the steam generator failure -- are now completely misled about how deep the problems with nuclear waste really go. Pun intended. There is no place to put it, but all they can think about is moving it somewhere -- anywhere.

Some activists have even joined with the utility, pushing hard for the Yucca Mountain unfinished permanent repository to restart. Others are content with any parking-lot anywhere, as long as it's away from the current site, which of course would certainly be fine with the utility, and with the local politicians who speak so loudly now, but were silent or belligerently pro-San Onofre before, such as Congressman (and possible future speaker of the house) Darrell Issa.

But wishing for the waste to be moved is not the same as moving it. And the fact is, there are no parking-lots available anywhere where the waste will be safe.

Yucca Mountain is a terrible "solution" to the waste problem. Water leakage from above, water seepage from below, volcanic eruptions in the not-so-distant past, the possibility the area will become lush (again) in the not-so-distant future (due to global warming)...there is only one conclusion: Yucca Mountain's "science" is full of holes.

There never will be any truly safe -- let alone, cost-effective -- solutions to the problem of storing nuclear waste indefinitely. There will always be an element of risk, no matter what solution is implemented.

For this reason, all "solutions" rely on "Probabilistic Risk Assessments" (PRAs) for justification. All PRAs accept that "life is a gamble." All PRAs gamble with your life.

In Nevada, they understand gambling. And they don't want Yucca Mountain.

Bad as Yucca Mountain is, the "interim" solutions are even worse. And worst of all, the area surrounding Yucca Mountain would probably become an "interim" storage site itself for many decades -- with minimal protection since it would be presumed to be very temporary.

Interim solutions offer no real protection for the fuel canisters from earthquakes, volcanoes, tornados and "tornado missiles," real missiles, A-10 Warthogs flown by renegade pilots with live DU shells, a LPG explosion nearby at sea or on the railroad tracks near many of the sites (including San Onofre), rust, apathy, poor welding during manufacture (include San Onofre here, too), transportation hazards, tsunamis...even asteroids.

Southern California's remaining newspapers blame the failure of the feds to open Yucca Mountain, and San Onofre's sudden closing, as the cause of high energy bills in the future. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The bill may be high, but it is because we have the waste -- we already made it, and now we have to protect it. Doing that successfully will cost billions. Failing to do so, however, could cost trillions.

Ionizing radiation destroys any chemical bond of any container you put radioactive substances in. Radiation accelerates decay, corrosion, embrittlement, rust, osteo-ripening, Wigner's disease, hardening, loss of ductility, aging...(these are all basically names for the same thing). So you can't just enclose nuclear waste and walk away. Eventually you have to transfer the waste to a new enclosure, or enclose the original enclosure (as they're doing in Chernobyl already). And then sooner or later, repeat the process.

Yucca Mountain was supposed to "solve" all that by letting the containers crumble under thousands of tons of rock, over a period of hundreds of years (so hopefully, most of the crumbling would start long after most of the fission products will have decayed away). Yucca Mountain is an iffy proposition at best, since predicting the behavior of the radionuclides in the ground over a period of many millennia is basically just guesswork.

Thanks to San Onofre and the complicity of the California Coastal Commission (CCC), the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the gullible public enjoyed relatively cheap energy (nevertheless, among the most expensive in the nation) for approximately two generations. But the full cost of that "cheap" energy is to be paid by our children, and our children's children, for thousands of generations.

Those who made the waste -- and thus, made the waste problem -- are the ones to blame if rates go up because Yucca Mountain (or any solution) doesn't open up. Likewise, those who made the waste are to blame if rates go up because the NRC (dream on), or the CPUC or CCC decides to require more robust (and more expensive) solutions than the cheap "ISFSI Islands" SoCalEd is proposing to use. If rates go up because we manage to catch the failure of a dry cask BEFORE a catastrophe, and only have to spend billions to repackage each cask, instead of trillions if there is a full release of one or more spent fuel casks, it will be the fault of those who made this awful stuff.

You can never clear the site of an operating reactor of its most dangerous, most risky contents. Risk is only reduced after the reactor is permanently shut down. After that, the fuel has to cool thermally and radioactively...the longer you let it cool, the less risky it becomes. It takes many millennia before it is safe to handle.

For operating reactors, worrying about getting their used fuel offsite is ignoring the more imminent danger: The reactor itself, and the used fuel which was most recently removed from the reactor. The older fuel (actually "old reactor cores") is a growing problem, but not the main problem at open reactors. Closing them is the main problem.

However, at closed reactors, the used fuel is the problem.

Operating reactors have to build several more dry casks every time they refuel, since their spent fuel pools are already full. After filling the stainless steel casks and inserting them into cement bunkers, the utility assumes that Department of Energy (DOE) will "take possession of it at some point." And so they keep operating.

The $30 billion dollars ratepayers across the country have already put into a fund for building a permanent solution is probably going to be siphoned off for "interim" storage solutions. There is currently a proposal to "only" siphon off the interest that is accruing -- but the principal is worth less and less every year because of inflation, so really that's making a permanent solution more and more difficult to fund properly. They've already stopped collecting more money from the ratepayers, because the DOE hasn't been getting anywhere with its plans.

The lesson to be learned by Californians from the San Onofre steam generator debacle and subsequent waste problem we are left with, is to shut down Diablo Canyon immediately and demand that Arizona shut down Palo Verde (20% owned by San Onofre's owner, Southern California Edison). Shutting down the operating reactors is the most important thing local activists around San Onofre can help with, since they can see (if they look) the difference in risk factors between: 1) an operating reactor, 2) "fresh" used fuel which was recently removed from the reactor, 3) older used fuel, and 4) no fuel on site at all (the desired condition everywhere).

But they can also see (if they look) that trying to force Nevada to take the waste is naive. This author was in Nevada for two hearings last month (September, 2015) and has been to five or six hearings there over the past decade and a half. The majority of the citizens of Nevada definitely don't want our waste, and Las Vegas in particular is adamant that THEY don't want it anywhere near them (and Yucca Mountain is VERY near them). And it's not just their elected representatives -- it's the people who elected them. And it's the people with money, too. The ones who own the casinos. They don't want nuclear waste trucked through their town (which would be the preferred route for much of the waste). City officials have even sworn to arrest anyone who tries to drive used nuclear reactor cores through their city.

The transport and storage accident scenarios envisioned by the NRC are farcical: In their fantasies, mere millionths of a single fuel pellet (i.e., tiny fractions of a gram) of nuclear waste ever escapes a dry cask, either during transport or while sitting wherever it may be for the next 300 years (or more). NRC assumes that only these tiny fractional amounts, out of all 10,000+ dry casks worth of fuel which already exists in America, and all that will be made in the coming decades, will ever be released in any "worst case" scenario. It's preposterous.

If we're lucky, all 300+ dry casks' worth that already exists in California will be transported with few accidents, and those accidents (according to the NRC's PRAs) will only release millionths of a gram (or less) of the 20 or so tons of nuclear fuel inside each cask. But perhaps we will not be so lucky, especially since the longer we wait to transport the casks, the more embrittled the containers will be when they are finally moved.

Nuclear power is, of course, completely replaceable with clean renewable energy, such as wind, wave, solar, and so on. These energy sources put zero costs on future generations and zero risk.

It's time for California and the rest of America to switch to clean energy solutions.

Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA

===========================================
Correspondence with Tim Judson, NIRS:
===========================================


To: "Tim Judson" <timj .. nirs.org>
Subject: RE: [NukeNet] NIRS statement on Pilgrim reactor closure announcement
Cc: "Michael Mariotte" <nirsnet .. nirs.org>, "Michael Aguirre" <maguirre .. amslawyers.com>, "Donna Gilmore" <dgilmore .. cox.net>

Tim,

Your policy has enabled the nuclear industry to give us 2,200 dry casks across the country so far. How many more are you willing to put up with? We'll need 10,000+ for all the waste in existence today, with a new one needed every other day in America for as far into the future as anyone can see. Because when the pools got full, NIRS and "1000 local, regional, and national groups across the country" endorsed dry cask storage when shut-down was the only reasonable alternative.

Yet you called this "secure." I don't know what metallurgists you consult, but clearly none I would respect.

Ace

At 10:39 PM 10/13/2015 +0000, Tim Judson wrote:
>Hey Ace,
>
>For over 10 years, NIRS has taken the position that fuel should be transferred from high-density pool storage to Hardened On-Site Storage, along with 1,000 local, regional, and national groups across the country, including those in reactor communities. Pilgrim is a Mark I Boiling Water Reactor, with the fuel pool six stories in the air. There is nothing less secure than that. We understand every site has different kinds of constraints and vulnerabilities. We also believe current dry-cask designs are not good enough, and we push for better standards. But the dangers of high-density pool storage are extreme. There is no good solution to the waste, only bad options ranging from worse to worst. Activists in the Plymouth community want the waste out of the pool. There has been a dispute about the location of the dry-cask pad, not the need to get the waste out of the pool.
>
>Hope that helps,
>Tim
>
>From: Ace Hoffman
>Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 1:49 PM
>To: Michael Mariotte
>Cc: Tim Judson
>Subject: Re: [NukeNet] NIRS statement on Pilgrim reactor closure announcement
>
>Does NIRS officially think the waste can be "secured" properly?
>
>If so, please think again!
>
>Ace
>
>At 05:36 PM 10/13/2015 +0000, NIRS wrote:
>
>
>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Tim Judson 212-729-1169
>October 13, 2015 timj .. nirs.org
>
>
>Statement by NIRS Executive Director Tim Judson on
>Entergy's Announced Closure of Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant
>
>NIRS applauds Entergy's decision to close the unsafe, uneconomical, and polluting Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant, on Cape Cod Bay in Massachusetts. However, Entergy's proposed 2019 closure date is unacceptable, and poses the risk that this dangerous reactor could continue operating for nearly four more years. Pilgrim currently has the worst nuclear safety rating in the country, tied with Entergy's Arkansas Nuclear One plant.
>
>Entergy has been cutting costs on the aging, uncompetitive reactor at Pilgrim for years, which has resulted in the rise in safety violations, equipment failures and even security lapses, and Entergy's decision to close the plant is ostensibly to avoid millions of dollars in costs to meet NRC's minimum safety standards. The NRC cannot allow a reactor to operate without addressing the systemic safety violations that Entergy has at Pilgrim.
>
>In 2013, NIRS, Citizens Awareness Network, Pilgrim Watch, and other organizations petitioned the NRC for enforcement of the agency's financial qualifications regulations at Pilgrim. Such action could have avoided this situation entirely, but NRC inexplicably refuses to enforce that regulation. We also call on New England's electricity grid operator to work with Entergy to release Pilgrim from its capacity commitments and enable the plant to close as soon as possible.
>
>NIRS supports the call of Senator Edward Markey for assistance to Pilgrim workers who may be displaced by the reactors' closure. That plan should begin with a planned, orderly, and responsible decommissioning of Pilgrim. With approximately $900 million in a dedicated decommissioning trust fund, most of the workforce could be retained for 10-20 years in securing the nuclear waste and cleaning up the radioactive and toxic materials at Pilgrim, restoring and protecting the ecology of Cape Cod for generations to come.
>
>-30-
>_______________________________________________________________________
>NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)

========================================
Quotes collected by Ace Hoffman:
========================================

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"Nuclear war must be the most carefully avoided topic of general significance in the contemporary world. People are not curious about the details." -- Paul Brians (author; quote is from: Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction)
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�When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.� -- Sinclair Lewis (first American Nobel Prize winner in Literature, 2.7.1885 - 1.10.1951)
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"There is no such thing as a pro-nuclear environmentalist." -- Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa, 1992)
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"Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories." -- Sun Tzu (Chinese general b.500 BC)
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�Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.� -- Margaret Atwood (Canadian poet/novelest/environmentalist/etc.)
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�The sun shows up every day and produces ridiculous amounts of power.� -- Elon Musk (5.1.2015)
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"The most intolerable reactor of all may be one which comes successfully to the end of its planned life having produced mountains of radioactive waste for which there is no disposal safe from earthquake damage or sabotage." -- A. Stanley Thompson (a pioneer nuclear physicist who later realized the whole situation)
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"Any dose is an overdose." -- Dr. John W. Gofman (another pioneer nuclear physicist who saw the light (9.21.1918 - 8.15.2007))
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"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery." -- Octavia Butler (science fiction writer, 7.22.1947 - 2.24.2006)
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"If you want real welfare reform, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.

If you want to reduce poverty, you focus on a good education, good healthcare, and a good job.

If you want a stable middle class, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.

If you want to have citizens who can participate in democracy, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.

And if you want to end the violence, you could build a million new prisons and you could fill them up, but you never end this cycle of violence unless you invest in the health and the skill and the intellect and the character of our children. You focus on a good education, good health care and a good job.

And other than that, I don't feel strongly about anything."

-- Paul Wellstone (US Senator, D-Minnesota, 7.21.1944 - 10.25.2002)
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"There are no warlike peoples - just warlike leaders." -- Ralph Bunche (8.7.1903 - 12.9.1971)
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In the execution room, Troy [Davis] used his last words to proclaim his innocence one final time. He then made a call for his movement -- all of our movement -- to bring about [an] end of the death penalty for good. And then, in his final breath, he asked God�s mercy upon those about to kill him.
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"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." -- Thomas Jefferson
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"Officials from the San Onofre nuclear reactor said the warning siren that went off yesterday was just a malfunction and no one should worry. Hey, I worry, if they can't even get the siren to work right, what the hell are they doing with the reactor??" Jay Leno 1/20/10
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"Please send this to everyone you know!" -- Ace Hoffman (original collector of the above quotes)
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This email was sent by:

-----------------------------------------

Ace Hoffman
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Carlsbad, CA
Email: ace [at] acehoffman.org

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