San Onofre Nuke Can Almost Dropped 18 Feet!

A last nights Community Engagement Panel on the decommissioning of the San Onofre Nuclear Waste Generating station a whistleblower named David Fitch stepped forward and said "I probably won't have a job tomorrow, but I am doing this for my daughter."

He reported that a Thin Holtec can slipped an almost fell 18 feet into its silo.

Gene Stone stepped up, silenced a freaked out David Victor with a Jedi Mind Trick, and made Tom Palmisano promise that they would not fire the guy!

Click Here To Support A Law Demanding Real Time Independent Radiation Monitoring all ALL California Nuclear Sites. 

ACTION ALERT! Support Real Time Public Radiation Monitoring

Gene Stone & Darin R. McClure on the top of the Nuke Dump with Our bGeigies 

Dear Readers, here is our updated text for this extremely urgent Residents Organized for a Safe Environment action alert. Hope you have time to let the CEP here from you today. Please share with your friends. If we want to make this work every email counts. Thank you in advance.

CLICK HERE FOR >> Independent Real Time Radiation Monitoring at San Onofre

Below is an action alert that ROSE is sending to some members of the CEP. I hope you may want to join us in this action for our community. We need 1000 people to send an email to the CEP ASAP!  If you are willing please send them a note, copy and paste or write your own text.

Then send it to these email addresses: david.victor@ucsd.edu,
manuel.camargo@sce.com, Tom.Palmisano@sce.com, danstetson@me.com,
garry@coastkeeper.org, marnimagda@gmail.com, genston@sbcglobal.net,

The subject line should read "Independent Rad Monitoring/Symposium on Radiation"

Community Engagement Panel members,

I am asking each of you as CEP members to support and to take action ASAP along with SCE for a public CEP meeting on "Independent Public Real-time Radiation Monitoring" for  San Onofre Nuclear Waste Dump, and a second CEP meeting for an "Educational Symposium on Radiation" with "independent" radiation experts along with experts from SCE and the NRC. This a necessary step for all the stakeholders to understand what is in and what could come out of these cans now or in the future. Thank you for your consideration of these two programs for the safety of our community.

Sincerely,

Sincerely, Gene Stone
Residents Organized For a Safe Environment (ROSE)
On twitter @gene_stone
http://residentsorganizedforasafeenvironment.wordpress.com/
http://partofthearth.blogspot.com/

"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new." Socrates

Sounding The Alarm: San Onofre Nuclear Waste Storage

SHOWING UP IS ALSO NOT THAT COMPLICATED! 

• Who: Citizens concerned about nuclear waste safety at San Onofre
• What: Edison’s quarterly Community Engagement Panel (CEP) Meeting - San Onofre
• When: Wed, June 27, 2018 4:30pm - Meeting starts at 5:30pm
• Where: Casino San Clemente, 140 West Avenida Pico, San Clemente, CA 92672
• Why: Shocking revelations - Edison has no method in place to repair or replace defective canisters of nuclear waste. (they think it will take a few years to figure that out...) 

Background on Nuclear Waste issues at San Onofre, just south of the world famous Trestles spot in San Clemente California AKA SURFING USA!
:
In Feb 2018, Edison began the year and a half long process of loading 73 more canisters of nuclear waste into the beachside concrete storage silo at San Onofre, adding to the 51 loaded canisters that have been on-site starting in 2003.

Public criticism ranges from outrage to disbelief as people realize the location of the nuclear waste storage is 100’ from the ocean, inches above the water-table, in an earthquake-tsunami zone, a few hundred yards from the I-5 freeway and Railroad, and…. on one of southern California’s most iconic beaches.

Details about the thin-walled canisters being used to contain the deadly radioactive waste cause even more alarm.  Ongoing Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) studies show that these canisters are susceptible to corrosion which can lead to cracking.  Loaded canisters cannot be inspected for cracks.  And, as the President of Holtec, the manufacturer of the canisters, stated at a previous CEP meeting, even a microscopic through-wall crack will release millions of curies of radionuclides into the environment. https://youtu.be/euaFZt0YPi4 

With each welded-shut 5/8” thick (thin) stainless steel canister containing roughly the radioactive equivalent of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, critics aptly refer to the loaded canisters as Chernobyl Cans.

Recent Shocking Revelations:
At the March 2018 CEP meeting, in his update on the nuclear waste loading process, Tom Palmisano, Edison’s Chief Nuclear Officer, stated that a defective canister was discovered.  Workers found loose bolts in the bottom of an empty canister. The bolts hold the internal fuel basket structure in place, and allow passive helium flow inside the canister.  This air flow is critical for cooling the thermally hot and highly radioactive waste.  According to Palmisano, Holtec changed the interior design without notifying Edison or the NRC.  Palmisano stated that all remaining canisters with the defective design were returned to Holtec, and loading resumed using canisters with the original ‘bolt-less’ design.

But what about the four - already loaded - defective canisters?
When asked if the four defective canisters will be unloaded, and reloaded into canisters with the original ‘bolt-less’ design, Palmisano explained that the technology does not currently exist to unload the waste from the canisters back into the spent fuel pools.  He also mentioned this has been a known problem for years.  https://youtu.be/mjgna2atn7Y.   see video of entire March 2018 CEP meeting -
https://www.songscommunity.com/community-engagement/meetings/community-engagement-panel-meeting

AS YOU READ THIS LINE TODAY Edison has no method to repair or replace the defective canisters.  LET THAT SINK IN FOR A MOMENT!!! NO PLAN B IF ANYTHING GOES WRONG!

At this next CEP meeting, in response to Edison’s inability to unload / reload canisters, Palmisano will presumably repeat what he has already stated at a number of CEP meetings, that defective or leaking canisters will be stored inside transport casks (like Russian dolls).  But transport casks have not been approved by the NRC for storage of defective or leaking canisters. Transport casks were not designed for storing these extremely hot canisters.

Public awareness of Edison’s poor choice of both the storage canisters and the beach-side storage site is growing.   At this point, people are particularly concerned about the 51 canisters (Chernobyl Cans) that could already have significant corrosion and cracking.

We are calling for Edison to build a Hot Cell, and reload the fuel waste into proven Thick-wall Casks (10" to 19.75" thick).  A Hot Cell is a helium-filled, robotically-operated facility, and it is the only other NRC approved method to unload canisters.

Thick-wall Casks, unlike the Thin-wall Cans, can be inspected, maintained and monitored to PREVENT major radioactive releases into the environment.  Thick-wall Casks withstood the Fukushima disaster.

Further implications of recent revelations:its not just our backyard.

These problems with the canisters at San Onofre apply to numerous sites across the country where over 2400 loaded thin-walled canisters are currently stored.

The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board December 2017 report to Congress states
spent nuclear fuel and its containment must be retrievable, maintained and monitored to prevent hydrogen gas explosions in both short and long term storage and transport. Edison has clearly indicated this cannot be done with the on-site spent fuel pools.
NWTRB DOE Management and Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel December 2017
http://www.nwtrb.gov/docs/default-source/reports/nwtrb-mngmntanddisposal-dec2017-508a.pdf?sfvrsn=12

Edison's NRC license requires the ability to unload canisters back into the pool.  It appears Edison is out of compliance with their NRC San Onofre dry storage licenses.  RESCIND THOSE LICENSES!

Edison needs to build a Hot Cell (asap) to address the
Chernobyl Can - Ticking Time Bombs - at San Onofre.

Safecast Community Engagement Panel Announcement

Gene Stone former CEP Member, invites current members to view a Safecast

I went to last nights Community Engagement Panel Meeting, a panel purposely set up with no power by the local utility so that they could mark off a check box for some bureaucrat someplace that says yep, they talked to the locals, move onto the next step.

At this meeting Top Palisano informed everyone in attendance that they have dropped five cans on the beach at Sano, 4 of the 5 cans had experimental pins helping to cool the waste that some how are now "questionably"doing their jobs, and that, from now on SCE will return to using the old design.

When asked by the panel why SCE didn't just go in and fix them? Open the cans, replace the pins? You know, do the job right. Toms answer sent shudders down the backs of those that do not drink So Cal Edison's expensive experimental kool aid. 

"No one has ever opened up one of these cans before, we believe it will take 1-3 years to figure out how to do that, we will get back to you..." - TP 

Yet Another Example Of SCE's Corporate Responsibility Standard

 Where have we heard this before? 

This is coming from the same corporation that brought you leaking steam generators, years of missed fire inspections, they no longer have the trust of any thinking member of the local population.

Lucky for use we have people like Gene Stone and Sean Bonner. Science is about FACTS not TRUST, and the people at Safecast are building a world of citizen scientists, that are out collecting the facts and making that information publicly accessible in real time http://safecast.org/tilemap/

With all of the backroom dealings and other untoward shenanigans transparency and clarity are a breath of fresh air, Data without collaboration is information without knowledge. 

SONGS Employees In An Alternate Reality Far Far Away 

It is time for the adults to come together in agreement that publicly measuring radiation around nuclear sites is something that needs to be set up before an accident not after one.

We also need to demand THICK WALLED CASKS and that So Cal Edison stop filling these Thin Walled cans, with a Chernobal worth of radiation EACH, until they have a way to inspect and repair and replace procedure in place and ready to go, (READ HOT CELL!) 

How can you help do that? If you would like to sponsor or help build one of these Safecast devices please fill out this form, or make a direct donation to the effort here https://publicwatchdogs.org/donate/  (please note radiation monitor network with your donation) 

My full statement to the NRC, Oct 27, 2014

I'd like to thank the NRC for hearing our comments today. I'am happy to see many friends here today that will speak for the safety of CA.

I must say, I no longer believe that SCE is considering doing the state of the art decommissioning that they promised us at the first Community Engagement Panel meeting. Nor do I believe that the NRC will demand or require that of them! But a more standard approach to decommissioning.

The NRC should have to be more proactive with its approach to SCEs PSDAR? The fact that the NRC does not approve or disapprove this minimalist approach to the safe storage of nuclear waste is very disappointing & alarming. Going forward with a plan that uses canisters that were designed for short-term storage does not make sense.

What would make sense to me is if the NRC would take an active regulatory role forcing & working with the industry to improve the design of the dry cask canisters and set in place a real & effective system of defense in depth, a aging management plan, for long-term storage of nuclear waste and a real method of inspection and monitoring of these improved canisters.

Thank you for listening to the people who will speak to you today for the safety of California's 8.4 million people, it's children & environment and the economy of SoCal.

You may now check this meeting off your list as another NRC public relations meeting where the public was heard but not listen too! We expect & need more than that from the NRC.

Gene Stone, ROSE, SCE/CEP Member

CPUC Investigates San Onofre

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) had managed to prevent most of us from speaking, but after listening to one Chamber-of-Commerce speaker after another take up the speaking time to say the same thing -- that San Onofre is "safe, reliable, affordable energy" (it's none of those) Gary Headrick managed to force his way to the podium by dint of having nearly half the audience there to support him. He was followed by an eloquent 13-year old from Idyllwild, Zora.

Those two presentations, the vote, plus our speakers for the press conference afterwards are all presented here.

Speakers: Gary Headrick, Zora, CPUC, Ray Lutz, Gene Stone, Donna Gilmore, Ace Hoffman

Video by @AceHoffman
www.acehoffman.org

What Integrity Looks Like