{"id":3481,"date":"2013-05-18T07:10:18","date_gmt":"2013-05-18T11:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=3481"},"modified":"2013-05-19T18:22:06","modified_gmt":"2013-05-19T22:22:06","slug":"san-onofre-off-forever-soon-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/san-onofre-off-forever-soon-2.html","title":{"rendered":"San Onofre Off Forever Soon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nPeople standing up for safety and sanity may yet stop big business nukes.\r\nAfter San Onofre is finally off for good, how about let’s cancel Plant Vogtle?\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nHarvey Wasserman wrote for nukefree.org 16 May 2013,\r\n\r\nSan Onofre at the No Nukes Brink<\/a>,\r\n<\/p>\r\n

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\r\nIn January, it seemed the restart of San Onofre Unit 2 would be a\r\ncorporate cake walk.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

Edison billed southern California ratepayers roughly $1 billion for\r\nSan Onofre in 2012 even though it generated no juice.<\/td><\/tr><\/table>\r\nWith its massive money and clout, Southern California Edison was\r\nready to ram through a license exception for a reactor whose botched\r\n$770 million steam generator fix had kept it shut for a year.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nBut a funny thing has happened on the way to the restart: a No Nukes\r\ngroundswell has turned this routine rubber stamping into an epic\r\nbattle the grassroots just might win.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\nIndeed, if ever there was a time when individual activism could have<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n

\r\na magnified impact, this is it (see\r\n\r\nwww.sanonofresafety.org<\/a>\r\nand\r\n\r\nwww.a4nr.org<\/a>).\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThis comes as the nuclear industry is in nearly full retreat. Two US\r\nreactors are already down this year. Yet another proposed project\r\nhas just been cancelled in North Carolina. And powerful grassroots\r\ncampaigns have pushed numerous operating reactors to the brink of\r\nextinction throughout the US, Europe and Japan, where all but two\r\nreactors remain shut since Fukushima.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nIn California, it’s San Onofre that’s perched at the brink.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nBy all accounts Southern California Edison should have the clout to\r\nrestart it with ease. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been a\r\nnotorious rubber stamp for decades. The California Public Utilities\r\nCommission, which decides how much the utilities can gouge from the\r\nratepayers, has long been in Edison’s pocket. State water quality\r\nregulations could force Edison to build cooling towers, a very\r\nexpensive proposition that would likely lead to a quick retirement.\r\nBut Gov. Jerry Brown has been deafeningly silent on the issue.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nBut San Onofre sits in an earthquake\/tsunami zone halfway between\r\nLos Angeles and San Diego. At least 8 million people live within a\r\n50 mile radius, many millions more within 100. The reactors are a\r\nstone’s throw from both a major interstate and the high tide line,\r\nwith a 14-foot flood wall a bare fraction of the height of the\r\ntsunami that overwhelmed at Fukushima.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nSan Onofre Unit One was shut in 1992 by steam generator issues.\r\nEdison recently spent some three-quarters of a billion dollars\r\nupgrading the steam generators for Units 2 and 3. But the pipes have\r\nleaked and failed. Units 2 and 3 have been shut since January 2012.\r\nEdison has now asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for\r\npermission to run Unit 2 at 70% power for five months to see how the\r\nreactor might do. An NRC panel has termed the idea “experimental.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nEdison is desperate to get the reactor running before summer. But in\r\nthe wake of Fukushima, and in the midst of a major boom in solar\r\nenergy, southern California is rising up to stop that from\r\nhappening.\r\n<\/p>\r\n