ROGER JOHNSON, San Clemente
No wonder that the Manager of Strategic Planning for SONGS wants everyone to ignore the past. SONGS has the worst safety record of all the nuclear power plants in the U.S. They mounted a 420 nuclear reactor vessel backward, had their emergency generator sabotaged, unsafely crammed more tubes into a steam generator, which resulted in radiation leaks, and then in 2018, they nearly dropped a loaded 50-ton canister.
No wonder the SONGS PR machine keeps parroting their favorite colloquialism “safety, stewardship, and engagement.” They rely on PR slogans rather than safety and stewardship, because they don’t want people to know what might happen here.
S. David Freeman, the former head of the Southern California Public Power Authority, put it another way when he described SONGS as a “disaster waiting to happen.”
Not many here realize that San Clemente, the official address of SONGS, is now stuck with 300 million highly radioactive pellets for the indefinite future. The pellets are packed in temporary thin canisters at sea level 108 feet from the Pacific Ocean.
Waves already break near the top of the 15-foot sea wall. (Go measure it—they call it a 30-foot sea wall.) But, don’t worry, the lethal uranium and plutonium will decay to relative safety in a few million years.
Not many also know that SONGS has been discharging low-level radiation into the atmosphere and pumping billions of gallons of it into the ocean for more than a half-century. Many wonder if this could be a factor in making cancer the No. 1 killer in California.
Studies in Europe report that living near a nuclear power plant increases cancer risks, especially for women and children. Unfortunately, no major studies have been done in this country for over a third of a century, largely because the nuclear industry has blocked proposals by the National Academy of Sciences to study this important issue.
Perhaps SCE is reckless, because the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industry Indemnification Act ensures that taxpayers, not the industry, will foot the bill for hundreds of billions when there is a major accident. And how many people know that no home, auto, or business insurance covers radioactive contamination?
If parts of Southern California become a zone of exclusion, everything becomes a total loss.