It's definitely time to decommission San Onofre!

Dear Readers,

It's time to decommission San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. It's the only sensible thing to do. It makes economic sense for just about everybody, and spares us the possibility of "Fukushima USA" here in SoCal.

Right now, neither of San Onofre's two reactors are operating. Southern California Edison is already predicting there could be rolling blackouts during the summer if they can't get the reactors running by then. The threat of blackouts is at odds with the historic record of energy usage, which clearly shows that there is more than enough electrical generating capacity and transmission line capacity in SoCal to replace San Onofre.

Nevertheless, SoCal residents can EXPECT rolling blackouts -- because SCE wants them to happen: It may cost as much as a billion dollars (or more) to repair San Onofre. Instead SCE could be securing contracts NOW for summer energy use. They could be building a billion dollars' worth of solar rooftops, offshore wind turbines, turbine peaker plants, cogeneration plants, energy storage reservoirs, geothermal energy systems, etc..

But they don't want to, because when San Onofre is operating, it's "easy money": A million dollars per day per reactor! So instead they'll want to "prove" that SoCal "needs" San Onofre, so they won't prepare, the blackouts will happen, and then they'll expect us, the ratepayers, to pay for it all!

Meanwhile, there is still NO solution to the problem of long-term storage of nuclear waste, which has been piling up for decades in dangerous "temporary" locations at every nuclear power plant in the country (and nor will there ever be a good solution). And NOR is there a solution to the dangers of nuclear weapons proliferation, which SanO exacerbates by producing plutonium and tritium. Additionally, the dangers from terrorism, or from mother nature's fury, remain unsolved too. San Onofre is built on or near several fault lines, and along the coast, nearly at sea level. It's tsunami-prone and earthquake-prone. And surrounded by about eight million people within 50 miles (noting that the U.S. Government recommended U.S. citizens evacuate from within 50 miles of Fukushima, Japan -- and ALSO noting that even that might not be far enough!).

Furthermore, San Onofre continues to have problems with worker harassment (intimidation of workers to prevent them from reporting dangers) AND, paradoxically, worker safety complaints (that safe procedures aren't being followed). San Onofre is officially (Nuclear Regulatory Commission's own data) the worst-run commercial nuclear facility in the nation on BOTH counts.

A meltdown at San Onofre would be the ruination of SoCal. And we don't need a tsunami or "the big one" to cause it: It's not inconceivable that a thing as simple as a flashlight dropped in the reactor water could start a cascade of failures, leading to a meltdown "just like" Chernobyl or Fukushima. That's why they have regulations to prevent things like dropped flashlights (I mention this specifically because it happened there last month, and the contract worker, a temporary employee at the plant, who violated workplace rules by dropping the flashlight, then further violated the rules by trying to retrieve it -- and falling in!)

SCE doesn't want to be responsible for ANY of the costs to fix the reactors. They just want to fix them any way they can, so they can restart them as soon as possible, so they can go back to making money -- and creating a ton a week of highly dangerous "spent fuel" which will be the real legacy of San Onofre's decades of operation: Millions of pounds of deadly poison sitting on our shoreline just waiting to be released by accident/sabotage, etc.. Southern California Edison will be long out of business, all of us will be long dead, California will be a nation unto itself (perhaps), but the waste will still be here.

The cause of San Onofre's current shutdown is defective replacement Steam Generators (SGs) made in Japan by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. MHI has been building SGs for nuclear power plants since the 1970s and have manufactured, shipped and installed well over 100 SG units around the world. MHI's current annual report indicates they plan to double their nuclear steam generator business several times in the next three years to almost $10 billion annually. So this is a big setback for them as well as for SanO's owners. The problem is almost surely the result of incorrect manufacturing procedures: This didn't have to happen. What other SGs around the world are in trouble?

Steam Generators are massive things used in Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs). PWRs have three coolant loops: Water under very high pressure in the primary loop goes through the reactor core, gets heated (and irradiated), and then goes through thousands of very thin tubes inside the steam generators.

San Onofre's two SGs each have nearly 9,500 long, thin U-shaped tubes (the tube's walls are about the thickness of a credit card). Because the water inside the thin tubes is highly pressurized, it does not boil. The water on the other side of the tubes (the secondary coolant loop) comes in contact with the hot tubes and turns to steam. The steam is piped out of the containment domes and into the turbine room, where it is used to turn the turbines which generate electricity. A third coolant loop (ocean water) condenses the steam in the second loop, and that condensate is then pumped back into the steam generators again.

When any company receives $800 million worth of equipment, it invariably inspects that new equipment very carefully to make sure it's exactly what they ordered. San Onofre's replacement steam generators were inspected when they arrived at the plant in 2009, and found to be defective. MHI had to send out a special team to SoCal to reweld them. Like the defects that are appearing now, those defects SHOULD NEVER HAVE MADE IT OFF THE FACTORY FLOOR.

You can be sure numerous additional inspections were done after the problems were discovered in 2009. The additional inspections and repairs took about six months. Then they put the steam generators in the reactors (two SGs in each of two reactors) and just over a year later... problems, problems, problems!

The first problems to show up were in Unit II, the older of the two operating reactors and the one to get its steam generators replaced first. Excessive wear was discovered on the thin U-shaped tubes inside the SGs, when were inspected during Unit II's first refueling outage after the SG replacement. The outage was already far from "routine" despite repeated assurances by the utility that it was "just" a routine refueling outage: The Reactor Pressure Vessel Head was being replaced, which is another massive (and expensive!) part which had worn out prematurely. Neither the RPVH nor the SGs were ever supposed to wear out in the entire life of the plant.

Unit II's SG wear is significant: Two tubes had at least 30% wear, and nearly 70 tubes had at least 20% wear, and about 700 tubes had at least 10% wear. The new SGs are expected to last 40 years or longer -- but all of this excessive wear was detected after only about 14 months of operation! PWRs rely on the SGs to remove excess heat from the reactor. They are a vital safety component of the reactor, which is one reason there is a minimum of two SGs per reactor (sometimes more than two) in every PWR in the world -- in case one fails.

San Onofre's engineers were quick to explain to the media and the public that the wear they found on Unit II was probably just wear from "settling in": The parts merely had to "get comfortable" with each other. I actually heard SanO employees using these "engineering" terms!

Then Unit III's steam generators failed, too -- and it was "discovered" the hard way: A rupture. One of the nearly 20,000 tubes inside Unit III's SGs suddenly burst, and the subsequent release of primary coolant -- which is highly radioactive -- into the secondary coolant loop -- which normally isn't very radioactive -- caused the control room operators to have to shut down that reactor as well. Some radiation was released to the atmosphere (and to the public) when the radioactive steam condensed back to water at atmospheric pressure.

Calling what happened Last January merely a "leak" is being too nice: It was an extremely violent flashing to steam of super-heated, super-pressurized radioactive water and chemicals. (If you passed your arm accidentally over the breach, it would take your arm off (by steaming it off!) in an instant. (But at least the stump would be sanitized.))

Such steam generator tube ruptures are rare, and it's a good thing: The real danger would be that one burst tube would damage the tube next to it, which would burst too, and so on in a cascade of failures that would throw metal parts throughout the primary and secondary coolant loops, damaging valves and reactor fuel assemblies, blocking water flow, and damaging the other SG. And then what? Fukushima USA: An inability to cool the reactor -- a meltdown.

San Onofre avoided that, but their troubles had only just begun.

After letting the reactor cool for several days, technicians went in and started trying to discover what had gone wrong with Unit III's new steam generators. Was it "just" wear, like Unit II was experiencing? It doesn't appear to be the same problem: SanO employees identified 129 tubes that appeared to be excessively worn, and started pressure-testing them. This involves increasing the pressure in one tube at a time to about three times the normal operating pressure. Seven tubes have failed these tests already, and they've only just begun that phase of the testing!

Will it ever be safe, or reasonable, to restart these reactors with Mitsubishi Heavy Industry's steam generators? When BOTH units are having problems? (Exactly ONE tube in Unit II was pressure tested in light of the problems with Unit III. That one tube passed the test. All pressure tested tubes are plugged up permanently, and can no longer be used.)

There can be little doubt now that MHI has been delivering products with criminally-negligent workmanship, and San Onofre has been accepting those parts and using them.

One meltdown at SanO -- or two -- would destroy everything we love about SoCal. Why spend billions of dollars just to restart THAT risk? Right now we just have the spent fuel to deal with -- the radioactive waste pile. It's deadly, difficult to manage, and will cost a fortune. But at least it's NOT GROWING at the moment, and that's good. In fact, slowly but surely, it's cooling and becoming less hazardous.

Restarting San Onofre is just plain stupid!

Sincerely,

Ace Hoffman, Concerned Citizen, Carlsbad, California USA (above images added 2025)

The author is an educational software developer. His programs on mechanical pumps, the human heart, statistics and the periodic table are used in over 1000 universities around the world. His book on nuclear issues, The Code Killers, is available for free download or online viewing from his web site: www.acehoffman.org . His essays have been republished many times.

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Is cancer an epidemic in America?

December 20th, 2011

Dear Readers,

A friend and I were looking back at 2011.

She remarked about all the cancer she's seen this year. Last month she lost a close friend -- a woman in her 30s. Another friend, 40, has bladder cancer for the second time.

My step-mother recently made a similar remark about cancer in my own family. She lives on the other side of the country and the family is scattered all over the globe. One brother-in-law has stomach cancer which has metastasized, and many of us are cancer survivors (including me (bladder, 2007)). And on my own newsletter list I know of a number of ongoing cancer cases as well.

It feels like an epidemic, but of course, the epidemiologists who work for the state or the federal government would undoubtedly tell us they can't discern anything "statistically significant" (they love that phrase!) from our "data" -- it's just a few random points, it doesn't show a trend. That's true of course -- but we're talking about real lives of our friends and families, not raw, impersonal numbers. We're looking for answers.

The epidemiologist will also point out that cancer will strike about one in two Americans at some point in their lives, and will be the underlying cause of death for somewhere between one in four, and one in three of us. So they're not really looking for an epidemic. They're looking for a worsening trend within an ONGOING epidemic.

Baseline radiation values vary enormously from one location to another. Accurate data isn't available. By the time something is occurring so frequently that researchers find it to be "statistically significant," it might already be killing tens of thousands of people annually, or even more.

As an example, it took thousands of carefully-done studies to show there was a legally-defensible, statistically-significant connection between cigarettes and lung cancer, heart disease, throat, lip, esophageal, stomach, colon, and rectal cancer, and low birth weight among the babies of smokers. All these and many additional health effects are now well-established, yet each connection was hard to prove.

But even today about a billion people think the statistics are wrong, or that they don't apply to them for any of about a billion reasons. They smoke anyway (including my friend, who's excuse is that she only smokes one or two cigarettes a day).

Radiation deaths are far more difficult to prove than smoking deaths, because the source is almost always unknown in its quantity, who it was delivered to, and when. A two-pack-a-day smoker knows he or she is a two-pack a day-smoker.

Who got what dose from Fukushima? Nobody knows, not even in Japan. So proper epidemiological studies will be nearly impossible to accomplish. Three radiation experts -- Robert Alvarez, Joseph Mangano, and Janette Sherman -- have made an attempt to calculate Fukushima's impact. They estimate that nearly 14,000 excess deaths may have occurred (including over 800 infants) in America in the first few months after Fukushima (see below).

The nuclear industry will tell you they don't see anything unusual going on. They'll remind you that: "No one was harmed by Three Mile Island." Independent studies indicate otherwise. They'll remind you that: "No one has ever been harmed by living downwind of a properly operating nuclear reactor". Again, independent studies indicate otherwise. And they'll tell you that: "Hardly anyone was harmed by Chernobyl" but again, independent analysis indicates as many as a MILLION people have already died because of Chernobyl!

And of course, they'll say that: "No member of the public was harmed by Fukushima" but they'll be wrong about that, too.

People don't like to talk about cancer. But ever since cancer "came out of the closet" about forty years ago, it's felt like an epidemic even though the obituaries stopped routinely listing the CAUSE of death -- about thirty years ago! Independent studies of cancer clusters have become much more difficult since we all started clamming up about who we are, where we live, where we work, and so on. Studies are even more difficult because we move so often, change jobs and companies, partners and eating habits.

And when a victim does manage to reach a settlement with a polluter, the terms and conditions are invariably kept secret, making the clusters that much harder to find for everyone else.

My friend is not a nuclear activist and wasn't talking about Fukushima and its aftermath. She just was wondering why so many people seem to have cancer these days.

"Could be Fukushima" I said.

"What's that?" she responded.

"Remember that nuclear accident in Japan last spring? It's still spewing radioactive poisons into the environment, and is still out of control. We need to shut them all down, including San Onofre." (SanO is our local pair of poorly-run nuclear reactors, about 15 miles away.)

"Where will we get our energy?" she asked.

I answered that San Onofre only supplies about 7% of California's power, which could easily be replaced by solar, wind, etc.. If I had more time, I would have made her aware of some other considerations besides just where our electricity will come from.

Here are some other reasons she might be thinking we can't shut San Onofre:

"Wind turbines kill birds!"

They do. So do plate glass windows in high-rise buildings, and so do cars, trucks, busses, trains and airplanes, deforestation and climate change -- but no one seems to care about those! Only wind turbines. And there are a variety of ways to increase wind turbine blade visibility to birds, ways to site them and so on, that can greatly reduce the incidence of bird strikes.

"You'd have to cover the whole country with solar panels!"

Not true! Actually an area in the southwest approximately 100 miles on each side would be enough -- and much of that can be found on existing rooftops, which are mostly just tar-covered, wasted space anyway!

"Hydroelectric power damages the river life."

You can install anything improperly if you like. Or you can build fish ladders, you can control the water levels in the rivers appropriately, you can locate the dams properly and make existing dams more efficient and so on.

"Mining for Rare Earth Elements (REEs) is extremely polluting -- but all the renewable energy sources needs REEs!"

That's right: For example, they need "permanent" magnets made of REEs. However, these are 100% recyclable! And don't forget that "rare" is just a name: These elements are fairly abundant, actually.

"Nuclear power has worked for 50 years."

No it hasn't! Accidents have been covered up, and when that isn't possible, they've been swept from the front pages of the news even as they're still happening! Fukushima is no longer the top item in the news each day, and yet it's an ongoing tragedy -- the most massive single environmental catastrophe the world has ever seen -- and capable of an even-more catastrophic "hydrovolcanic explosion" if any of the molten cores hit the water table underneath.

Lastly but most importantly, she might think:

"They've solved the nuclear waste problem, it's just a political issue now."

Completely false! In fact, the Yucca Mountain scientific team was allowed to come up with ANY scientifically-viable alternative to Yucca Mountain if they could. They only thing they couldn't consider was the same thing in a different location. They couldn't come up with anything else that would work, and neither will Obama's "Blue Ribbon Committee."

Nothing else works any better than Yucca Mountain would, but Yucca Mountain wouldn't work, either: It's geography is unstable, it suffers from water seepage, the population centers nearby are too close, transporting the waste there would be a nightmare.

Unfortunately, any OTHER location will have the same problems, or worse! Therefore, the only solution to the nuclear dilemma -- and it's a partial one -- is to stop making more waste.

But unfortunately, the average adult in America has no idea what "radiation" is. They don't know an element from an isotope from a molecule from a sub-atomic particle, and couldn't care less. The word "epidemiology" causes their eyes to glaze over. And cancer scares them.

How will it be possible for a "democratic" society (let alone any other) to fulfill its promise to protect its citizens, when those same citizens are ignorant of the dangers they face? When the problems are too complex to grasp in a sound bite? When there is always an opposing view, who usually sounds just as passionate or more so (after all, their livelihoods are usually at stake)?

My hope for 2012 is that the world will educate itself more about the problems it faces.

It is our duty to our children to learn how to protect them.

My friend has a wonderful child. But she is probably unaware that radiation harms young children at roughly 10 times the rate it harms adults. Infants are a hundred times more vulnerable, and fetuses a thousand -- or thousands of times -- more so, because their cells are differentiating.

The Nuclear Age has been an epic failure so far, and is destined only to be more so in the future. A third of a trillion dollars are projected to be put into a dozen (or more) genocidal, environmentally-devastating nuclear-armed and nuclear powered submarines for the next generation to play war games with. Then those sailors will need jobs in the industry. Same as now. But nuclear weapons have not prevented war, as was promised, and nuclear power plants have only made us vulnerable. Electricity has not been "too cheap to meter," as was also promised. Nothing's worked out for the nuclear industry -- except their ability to fool the public.

After 2011, the world is three meltdowns more polluted than it was in 2010. It also has about 20,000 tons of NEW "High Level Radioactive Waste" from ~500 commercial reactors still operating around the world. This new "HLRW" waste (mostly used nuclear reactor cores) is about ten million times more hazardous than before it was put in the reactor (and it was no picnic then, either).

TEPCO, the owner of the stricken reactors, lies constantly. The reactors spew radioactive waste constantly. The Japanese government lies constantly. No one knows what's really going on anyway. Everyone is now admitting that it will take "40 years" to put Fukushima into "Safe Store", a fictitious state of temporary nuclear bliss.

2012, here we come.

Sincerely,

Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California USA (images added 2025)

The author has been writing about nuclear power for a number of decades. His book on the subject, called The Code Killers, is available from his personal web site: www.acehoffman.org . He also writes educational software using animation as a teaching tool. His software products, as well as many free educational animations about nuclear issues, are available at: www.animatedsoftware.com .

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PRESS RELEASE - Janette D. Sherman, MD:

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12-19-2011h

This report, "An Unexpected Mortality Increase in the United States Follows Arrival of the Radioactive Plume from Fukushima: Is There a Correlation?" published in the International Journal of Health Sciences today, is not new science, but confirms research done over the decades as to adverse effects caused by radioisotopes to the unborn and the very young because of their rapidly developing cells, immature immunological systems and relatively small weight.

As background, in the 1950s, I worked for the Atomic Energy Commission (the forerunner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) at the Radiation Laboratory, University of California in Berkeley and the US Navy Radiation Laboratory at Hunter's Point in San Francisco. Near 60 years ago, we learned that radiation could damage animals and plants and cause cancer, genetic damage, and other problems.

The issue of the danger from nuclear power plants is not just the engineering, but biology and chemistry. We have understood for decades where and how radioisotopes interact with life systems.

Cesium-137 and Strontium-90 have half-lives of approximately 30 years. It takes 10 half-lives for an isotope to fully decay, thus it will take 300 years or Three Centuries before radioactive cesium and strontium will be gone.

Cs134, Cs-137 and Sr-90 continue to be released from Fukushima in tons of contaminated water that is making its' way across the Pacific Ocean. Cesium concentrates in soft tissue, strontium in bones and teeth, of the unborn and young.

Immediately after Chernobyl the level of thyroid disease increased. Given the large amounts of radioactive iodine

(I-131) released from Fukushima, thyroid disease will develop in those exposed in Japan, as well as in those exposed to lesser amounts throughout the northern hemisphere. Public health officials need to anticipate and prepare for these findings.

The highest levels of I-131 measured by EPA in precipitation varied from a high of 390 picoCuries (pCi) in Boise to 92 in Boston, with intermediate levels in Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Jacksonville and Olympia, WA. (Normal is @ 2 pCi)

Not every system was evaluated after Chernobyl, but of those that were: wild and domestic animals, birds, fish, plants, fungi, bacteria, viruses - even humans - were altered by the radiation, often for generations.

Birds in the 30-kilometer "exclusion zone" of Chernobyl display small brain size, alterations of normal coloration, poor survival of offspring, and poor adaptability to stress.

Recent, independent studies conducted in Scandinavia shows a decline on academic performance in children exposed during the Chernobyl fallout.

80% of children in Belarus are considered un-well by government standards.

Unless the earth stops turning, and the laws of biology, chemistry and physics are rescinded, we will continue to see sickness and harm spread to the children of Fukushima, the same that occurred after Chernobyl. We ignore history at our peril.

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Full article available on 12-20-2011 at:

www.janettesherman.com

www.radiation.org

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Contact information for the author of this newsletter:

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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

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