San Clemente Radiation Event Emergency Planning Meetings

San Clemente California Fukushima USA

In the past 60 years there have been numerous military and nuclear power plant accidents which resulted in radiation poisoning to the public. Three of the biggest disasters were at Three Mile Island (USA), Chernobyl (Russia), and Fukushima (Japan).  An NRC study warned that a nuclear event in the U.S. could cause 50,000 fatalities and cost over $300 billion in property damage.  Anyone who lives within the 50 mile danger zone (San Diego to Los Angeles)   should prepare for possible emergencies including abandoning their home.

What Could Cause a Nuclear Emergency
·        Earthquake
·        Tsunami
·        Equipment failure
·        Power outage
·        Human error
·        Terrorist attack

What Will Not Happen
·        Atomic bomb-type explosion

What Could Happen
·        Radiation leaks from very small to very large will move inland and follow prevailing wind patterns.
·        Radiation cannot be seen, heard, tasted, or smelled. It can silently penetrate all materials.   It will contaminate food and water, clothing, furniture, and can be inhaled or absorbed through the skin.  Large doses will quickly have severe and possibly lethal impacts.  Smaller doses will not be noticed immediately but can lead to severe medical problems weeks, months, or years later.  Predictions of premature cancer deaths from Chernobyl range to almost a million all over Europe.

What You Can and Cannot Do
·        Radiation emergencies are unlike any other conventional emergencies.   This means that much of conventional disaster planning will not work.
·        Depending on where you live, evacuation may not be feasible.   Evacuation cannot take place upwind because of the ocean, and moving 8.4 million people downwind cannot work and might expose everyone to even more radiation.
·        From past experience we know that authorities underestimate the actual radiation levels or may not want the public to know the dangers.  The only way to know the radiation level in your area is to do what many Japanese have done:  buy your own household Geiger Counter. A millionth of a gram of Plutonium 239 can be lethal.
·        If you have a basement or underground shelter, go there and stay there.
·        Learn about the pros and cons of taking Iodine pills which might reduce absorption of certain kinds of radioactive elements.
·        In the event that a widespread area between San Diego and Los Angeles becomes contaminated, be prepared to abandon your home.  Insurance will not cover any loses.  After 25 years, Chernobyl remains an uninhabitable zone of death may stay that way for centuries.  This could happen to any area near a nuclear reactor.

Are Nuclear Reactors Safe?
          It is not possible to make nuclear reactors 100% safe  (as we have seen from Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima).  Explosions within a reactor are uncommon but did happen at Fukushima. Each plant also stores many dangerous and relatively unprotected radioactive fuel rods outside the reactor. Estimates of natural disasters (earthquakes, tsunamis, fires) and other dangers (human error, terrorist attacks) involve guesswork and have been wrong in the past.  In the event of a disaster,  operators of a nuclear plant are not liable.

Should the Remaining San Onofre Reactors Be Decommissioned?
          This is an expensive process, but consumers already pay for this every month in their electric bill.   All reactors have a limited lifespan, and the oldest San Onofre reactor was decommissioned 20 years ago.  The two remaining reactors, already renewed once,    should be closed as soon as possible.   San Onofre's aging reactors, unfortunately built in a highly populated area,  are vulnerable to tsunamis, earthquakes, and terrorists.  Since it is not possible to protect the public in the event of an accident, many argue that public safety can be achieved only by closing the facility.   (The determination that evacuation was not possible is what forced the closing of the  Shoreham reactor in NY.) Many countries have banned nuclear reactors  or are phasing them out.
          Even though the remaining San Onofre reactors are very old, the operator (Southern California Edison) is planning to lobby for license renewal.   Because it was built so long ago, it is exempt from many safety standards required of new reactors.   There is a very large, powerful, profitable, and well-funded public relations lobby that promotes  nuclear energy.  The U.S. government has agencies which are supposed to insure public safety, but these agencies often ignore the public and act in the interests of the nuclear industry. Most funding for the NRC comes from the nuclear industry it is supposed to regulate.


Three very important "San Clemente Radiation Emergency Planning Meeting" reminders:

          1.  Progressives of South Orange County, 6 PM this Thursday Sept. 22, Dana Point Yacht Club.  Our guest will be Ace Hoffman who will speak about the dangers of living near a nuclear power plant.  RSVP to  Roger at SCNJ66 at yahoo dot com.

          2.  San Clemente City Council Town Meeting,  Tues., Sept. 27 6:30 PM, San Clemente Community Center (100 N. Calle Seville).     The Lessons Learned from Fukushima Part One: The Nuclear Industry Point of View.

          3.   San Clemente City Council Town Meeting, Tues., Oct. 11 6:30 PM, San Clemente Community Center (100 N. Calle Seville).    The Lessons Learned from Fukushima Part Two:  Presentations from Independent Experts about the Safety of the San Onofre nuclear power plant.

       
 Learn more about nuclear power by visiting these websites:          
www.nirs.org;     www.nukefree.org;     www.acehoffman.org;     www.sanclementegreen.org;

San Clemente's Best Case Scenario Disaster

No Earthquake - No Tsunami - Know Problem 

At approximately 3:30 p.m. on September 8, 2011 south Orange County experienced an electrical outage, which extended south to Baja, Mexico, and east to Yuma, Arizona.  This was the largest power outage in Southern California history, according to @SDG&E.  San Clemente, Dana Point, and San Juan Capistrano, the three centers of population in the southern-most end of the county, all suffered a complete loss of electrical power.  As a result, traffic lights either ceased to function, or went to flashing red.  ATMs, cash registers, street lights, gas pumps, all stopped working.  Businesses, restaurants, and schools closed and sent their employees home early.  San Diego’s Lindbergh field halted all incoming traffic, and Amtrak stopped running its trains.

All of these factors led to extremely heavy traffic on both surface roads and the Interstate 5 freeway; intersections became gridlocked at the four-way flashing red lights, and freeway off-ramps backed onto the freeway itself, causing jams, wrecks, and fender-benders.  A customer at a Radio Shack in Dana Point said it took her 2.5 hours to drive the 7 miles from La Pata Avenue through the Ortega Highway interchange with Interstate 5.  Normally, this would be a 10-minute drive.  Due to the high heat, people left their engines running while stuck in traffic, and many people ended up abandoning their cars as they ran out of gas.  At 7 p.m. it took me 30 minutes to drive from Golden Lantern and the PCH in Dana Point to my home in north San Clemente, just off the freeway, a drive of usually 7 minutes.

Additionally, cellular phone reception ceased in some areas, and was severely impacted in other areas, leading to failures in service, and hampered communications between community members and loved ones.

All of this occurred under relatively calm circumstances, fair conditions, and a somewhat circumspect, tolerant attitude on the part of most people who understood, via the radio, that there was no real emergency, and that everything possible was being done.  And yet, under these “ideal” circumstances, no one could get anywhere in an efficient manner.

The optimum emergency we experienced on September 8 was a telling dress rehearsal for what might happen in a real emergency, and the results are disheartening and concerning.  In a situation where urgency and panic are high, such as a nuclear accident at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, or a severe earthquake, or a military incident, the resulting chaos, confusion, and gridlock are likely to be far worse.  Not only that, but in the event of an accident at San Onofre, the public would simply sit in traffic under radiation, guaranteeing fatal and/or longterm negative health consequences.

It’s my opinion that there are no simple fixes for evacuating large numbers of people from this area.   The main traffic problem was mostly on the surface streets, not the freeway, so the argument for the efficacy of the extension of the toll road completely loses ground.

I believe that educating the public about emergency preparedness needs to be re-vamped, re-started, and widespread.  People need to know what options they have for staying in place, and how to handle the threat of radiation.  The City of San Clemente could and should work with the Red Cross and local hospitals and public agencies (fire and sheriffs’ departments) to develop a new, more effective, and more realistic disaster plan for its community members and families.

Sincerely,
Beth Anne Boardman, R.N., M.A.,
San Clemente resident, and mother of two.

Great Black-Out 2011

Lets Go Solar! 

Dear Readers,

It looks like everyone survived the Great San Diego Black-Out of 2011.

I didn't even notice there was a black-out at first, other than the printer going off while I was trying to print protest books against San Onofre Nuclear Waste Generating Station.   A group of us formed up post-Fukushima, and we're going places and raising awareness.  And we need books -- lots of books!  People are pretty ignorant about the dangers, even post-Fukushima.  There's a lot of information being kept from the public and misinformation being presented to them.

San Onofre didn't help at all to keep the power on when the grid went down.

Instead, they had to shut down themselves!  Supposedly this was because "they had no place to send the power."  That's how the spokesperson for the plant describes it.

But I would say it was because they had no offsite power coming INTO the plant!  That's what probably really shut the plant down.

But one way or the other, here's the obvious thing:  San Onofre is not helping.

San Onofre is presumably currently operating on Emergency Diesel Generators as I write this -- and generating ZERO power to help alleviate the situation.

Thanks for your help, SONWGS -- NOT!

About one and a half million homes -- five million people -- were without power for at least six to eight hours yesterday and today, and many of them are still without power.

There WAS a seven-car pile-up on I-5 (the main freeway that runs near San Onofre), which shut it down in both directions, and I-5 was shut down heading out of San Diego elsewhere at the same time -- it was a mess!

But I was prepared -- or so I thought.  When the printer went out, my UPS beeped and the front panel lit up.  Those were my clues that five million of us were in the dark.  I paid little attention, being in the middle of writing a newsletter about what an atom is, an alpha particle, a beta particle, a gamma ray, a half-life, and so on.

But then the UPS beeped again, and the print job was clearly not running (the printer pauses now and then anyway, for some reason), so I went upstairs and checked the printer, and it was completely off and the on/off switch wouldn't do anything.

So then I started to grasp that there was a blackout, and shut down the computer so that I wouldn't drain the UPS battery just in case I needed it.

I tried to count up all the ways I wasn't prepared for real trouble -- like, a meltdown at San Onofre because of the "Station Black-Out" conditions (the same as occurred at Fukushima after the earthquake and tsunami, but minus the earthquake (which actually started the inexorable sequence that led to meltdown of the three reactors in Japan) and minus the tsunami (which is blamed for the meltdowns, but apparently was NOT responsible -- it was the earthquake).

We have earthquakes here, too.  Bad ones.  Right near San Onofre Nuclear Waste Generating Station.

Small-scale distributed renewable energy is a much safer way to power the grid.  In an emergency, nuclear power is unlikely to be there to help at all!  We've seen this now, time and again.

And the traffic!  Oh, the traffic!  Because the traffic lights were out everywhere, it took my wife more than an hour to get home, normally a 12 minute drive in clear traffic and a 20 minute drive at rush hour.  The 60 or so trollies in the city of San Diego all stopped at the same time, and only a couple of trains ran, so if you missed them, you missed them.

Could we evacuate five million people if San Onofre Nuclear Waste Generating Station melted down?  No!  Can San Onofre melt down?

In a heartbeat.  It's useless, wrong, and crazy to continue risking the enormous death and destruction that would accompany an serious accident at San Onofre.  Trapped as we are with only a few roads out of the area, San Onofre actually cuts in half the main evacuation route needed in case of an accident at the plant!  That is, the plant itself is located so close to the freeway that ANY accident at the plant will close I-5 immediately, and probably I-15 as well.

Meanwhile, the plant itself has been on restrictions and tightened inspections for years now because of worker apathy, anxiety, and audacious arrogance:  They faked safety inspections, fire inspections, security inspections, and medical claims, work records, time sheets, and, of course, worker's own complaints were filed in the "circular" file or actually given to the supervisor about whom the complaint was filed -- the LAST person who should be seeing the complaint!

Now, these guys are all scared the power plant WILL actually be shut down!  They put on a brave face, but scratch the surface, and you find out they are being told not to talk to the public, not to talk to reporters, not to talk to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission unless they absolutely have too -- and WHY are they so scared?

They're afraid they'll lose their jobs.  Get thrown out in the bad economy just like so many of the rest of us.  Never mind that they could be building solar and wind turbine power supplies instead.  Never mind that they are generating 500 pounds of high-level nuclear waste every day that they don't know how to store or how to get rid of.  (The most toxic stuff on earth, and, thanks to Fukushima, the most toxic stuff in your lungs and the rest of your body right now.)

Never mind that there is no way to evacuate San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles ....

Never mind the lives that would be lost if there was a meltdown, or a spent fuel pool fire, or a dry cask fire, or all three, due to an earthquake, or a tsunami, or a power black-out, or all three.

Never mind all that -- they are afraid they'll lose their jobs.

Sincerely,

Ace Hoffman
www.animatedsoftware.com

The author, 55, has been studying nuclear power for about 40 years.  He is a bladder cancer survivor, educational software developer, technologist, computer animator, survivalist, humanitarian and small businessman.

Lessons Learned Fukushima USA

Into Eternity

How NOT to Learn the Lessons From Fukushima.
As a San Clemente City Manager or Council Member:

1) Exclude the public from voicing their serious safety concerns about SONWGS despite the fact that it was the public that demanded this meeting in the first place.

2) Discourage informed two-sided discussion at all cost.

3) Establish early on that the priority of the pubic meeting is the duration of the meeting and that exposing the gaping holes in our public safety is secondary.

4) Talk down to the public with the authority vesting in you by the very public that is now asking for your help.

5) Assume that the public, fearing for their safety, are alarmist, and that the experts have all the answers.

6) Repeat the exact mistakes made by public officials in Japan and align yourself with the interests of nuclear industry to the detriment of the public safety that you are mandated to protect.

7) Tell the PUBLIC that allowing them to voice their safety concerns at a PUBLIC meeting, that the PUBLIC has requested for 2 years, is not only impossible due to the City Council’s PUBLIC meeting protocols but also because it would simply take too much time.

Lessons Learned From Fukushima by the NRC and Power Plant Owners:

1) Suppress the HORRIFIC facts and do it with a sense of unassailable authority. It calms the pubic really well.

2) Offer the public TECHNICAL answers to MORAL questions regarding the immense public safety risks of nuclear power.  It confuses the public really well.

3) Lie to the public and if they don’t buy it, lie again and again until it becomes your truth.  It feels really good.

4) When you don’t have the answers to the public's serious safety questions, pretend that you do by baffling the pubic with your technical B.S.  It will make you feel really powerful.

5) Tell the public, when your nuclear reactor cores are in full meltdown, that “We have the situation under control”  Misinformation is your best friend.

6) As catastrophic levels of radioactive fallout peg the dial on your radiation detectors, simply shift the decimal point over several spaces on the detectors and again reassure the pubic that you "have everything under control."  This lesson worked really well inJapan to calm the public and prevent panic.

7) Intimidate the hell out of your employees so that they fear telling the truth about safety issue found at the plant.  It helps set up the pre-conditions for #8 below.

8) Frame all discussion about nuclear plant safety in such a way that all public meetings have a Hollywood style "happy ending".  America loves good fiction with a happy ending.

9) Focus on minutiae like “We practiced how to turn the valves properly” and downplay the REAL ISSUES like, “There is nothing we can do to protect you and your family if this thing blows and you will need to figure out how to protect yourselves from the onslaught of deadly radiation.”  It reinforces #1 above really well.

10) Don’t tell the public that a single nuclear accident doesn’t stop killing for hundreds of generations, or that a single fuel flea smaller than the size of the period at the end of this sentence is a death sentence to you or your children if you accidentally inhale it.  Opps, does this apply to everyone?

11) And definitely do not tell the U.S. public that they have been swimming in, and inhaling, Fukushima fuel fleas since April 2011.  That would be contradictory to item #1 above and does not lead to the happy ending in #8 above.


Into Eternity

Torgen Johnson
www.sanonofre.com

San Clemente City Council Says "Don't Dig Here For Truth"

#SCCouncil forgets pledge for a fair and balanced dialog.

There will be no free flow of information at the September 27th meeting here in San Clemente.

Last night's city Council decision to break up the Sept 27th meeting with the NRC & SCE into two separate meetings does not bode well for our communities' chance for a fair and balanced meeting as asked for by four city Council members.  City Manager George Scarborough made it clear that the NRC officials would not participate in the meeting if confronted by independent experts on the same date, using the excuse that to add 30 minutes for independent experts to speak on the same day would change the agenda. Mr. Scarborough and the city Council knew all along we intended to bring three independent speakers to the meeting.  Saying that we only informed them at the last city council meeting two weeks ago. This is untrue.  It is true we only told them their names two weeks ago.

We have been asking for this meeting and City Hall's help with it to inform the public about the safety issues at SONGS for two years. When the meeting is finally set, we, the ones who asked for the meeting, are banished to a 2nd day far,far away in some other galaxy at some other time & place, yet to be determined. 

Is that the fair and balanced approach to inform the public that we can expect in San Clemente?

Gene Stone
Residents Organized For a Safe Environment (ROSE)

Don't Dig Here

San Clemente City Council Blinded by SCE?

Do not turn blindly away, We have seen what happens, While there is still time...

Your voice is needed. Tonight 6 pm 100 Avenida Presidio San Clemente City Council Meeting.

Nuke Plants + Fault Lines + Tsunami Hazard Zones = Fukushimas... Any Questions?

Alec Baldwin On Nuclear Power

 

  Direct evidence that the dangers of nuclear power have been underestimated. 

Atmospheric dispersion of radionuclides from Fukushima

Are You Ready To Get Involved?