By Steve Netherby, San Clemente
Last September, as reported in this paper, I hiked the John Muir Trail from Yosemite Valley to the peak of Mt. Whitney. The JMT is an iconic hike, through perhaps the most beautiful country in the High Sierras, and I had wanted to complete it since I was a teenager. After my pack and I had ridden trains and buses from San Clemente to Yosemite, I set out on the trail with a sense of elation and happy anticipation.
As I trekked upward from Yosemite’s Happy Isles toward Vernal and Nevada Falls, I recorded my impressions on my iPhone’s audio notes application. Ironically, my seventh voice memo on that blue-sky day was a sobering one, all about San Clemente’s neighboring San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS): I asked myself, “What if SONGS melts down while I’m up here and Jackie (my wife) is home in San Clemente?”
First, I might not find out for days, possibly weeks—there’s no cell phone service over 98 percent of the trail. Second, once I did find out, I would do all in my power to get home to my wife; we’ll have been married for 46 years this February and, if she were exposed to the radiation, I would want to be with her, to hold her close and share her fate. But would I be allowed to return? What if she was trapped in the evacuation zone and I couldn’t get to her? The questions that came, one after the other, were heart wrenching.
For too many years, we in Orange and San Diego Counties have, in exchange for the privilege of residing and working in this beachfront paradise, lived in denial that we risk health and life-years every day to what the recent book Nuclear Roulette by Gar Smith, rightly calls “the most dangerous energy source on the planet.” In our lifetimes, we may never sheath the sword of Damocles that hangs over us here—in the 4,000-plus tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste (produced by the plant, when it’s active, at the rate of 500 pounds per day, and stockpiled a few miles from our doors) that no container, natural or manmade, can imprison indefinitely. What we can do is limit the existential threat of a Fukushima-style meltdown.
SONGS has been shuttered for a year. More than 700 workers there are slated for layoff. In towns around Orange County, homebuilders are offering full-featured homes that require no outside power. The time is right and ripe for closing SONGS for good—and turning our talent and treasure to advancing green power and diminishing greatly the frightening legacy we bequeath to our children and grandchildren.
I too have concerns. I agree about the dangers of SONGS to the local community. I’ve tried to speak out, in fact I’m right in the middle of a letter to our Senators Boxer and Feinstein. My complaint is about the safety pamphlet distributed by So Cal Edison that shows traffic flows from the Dana Point area in case of an accident. Whereas the depiction of flows is accurate as far as it goes, no traffic will flow on the streets and roads as shown. Seven million people will be trying to get out, and few will in the worse case. I maintain the concept that we who live here will be safe because we can escape via the roads and highways is a blatant lie. I believe that process demands that studies show the impacts of accidents in different conditions (wind direction, severity of accidents) must be released to the general public so we can accurately assess potentials to survive any accident. Further, I suggest that another safety brochure be released that accurately discusses the chances that we and our children can survive a broad range of possible acccidents, and the chances thereof. In my mind the current brochure suggests a cover up that demands an investigation as to who is responsible for the lack of pertinent information, and that it has been released to the general public as reliable data.
I appreciate that you have printed my comment in the March 8 edition of the Dana Point Times. I have a couple of notes. First, my name is Slark, no Slarik. I wouldn’t care except that in today’s internet world the correct spelling might provide a link that would prove useful to others seeking information. Second, my comment was not clear regarding why traffic will not flow. The simple answer is gridlock. Imagine, for instance, that an accident alert were sent on a typical Tuesday morning. The first thing that will happen is that every parent would try to get children from school, or where ever they might be. Second everyone would head to the nearest freeway, or what ever road or street that allowed them to get away, all of which head in the same limited direction. Instant gridlock. Everyone in Orange County would be trying to get away. Because we’re the closest to SONGS, and farthest away from safety, I believe none of us would get out for a couple of days. Then the safety pamphlet tells us to stay indoors and run our air conditioners. What air conditioners? Most dwellings in our area don’t have air conditioners. It is appalling to me that SONGS just went through a technical situation where we apparently just avoided a serious situation, described as a ‘design problem’. Finally, the problems mentioned regarding the pamphlet are obvious to anyone who looked. How is it the this ‘safety pamphlet’ was allowed to be released with such obvious flaws? Don’t we pay people at our cities to analyse these things before release to we the people? Finally, I’ve described this situation to our Senators Boxer and Feinstein, and described it as a rights violation. In my opinion whoever wrote and released this pamphlet must have known that we in Zone 1 as described in the pamphlet will have little hope of escaping death or a future of cancer in the event of a Fukushima type accident, under the right conditions. I believe this pamphlet was deliberately designed to obfuscate in an effort to get SONGS restarted. The alternative to believing in deliberate obfuscation is that complete incompetence exists where the safety of us and our children should be of prime importance. Shut SONGS down permnantly, there is no solution to the problems outlined.