Ending an Impasse Requires People Power

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Editor,

A 2014 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office asserts that spent nuclear

fuel is “an extremely harmful substance if not managed properly” and that “if its intense

radioactivity . . . were released by a natural disaster or an act of terrorism, it could

contaminate the environment with radiation.”

Our City Council has taken an important step by asking the Nuclear Regulatory

Commission to see that the spent fuel at the closed power plant at San Onofre is moved

to a safer location as soon as possible. Village Laguna is committed to helping raise

awareness of this threat to our homes and lives in the hope of spurring federal action.

The nation’s spent nuclear fuel is stored at 75 sites in 33 states and amounts to 72,000

metric tons.

Disposal of it was made a federal responsibility in 1982, and a repository

was to be in operation by 1998. The site considered, at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, was

declared unworkable in 2009. In 2012 a blue ribbon commission recommended that

Congress create a new organization dedicated to managing spent nuclear fuel and that

the approach to sitting storage facilities be “consent-based.” This is where things stand

today.

The speakers at a panel discussion held in San Juan Capistrano last month made it

clear that efforts to deal with the problem at the federal level are at an impasse. Brought

together by a Washington think tank, Bipartisan Policy Center, at the request of

Southern California Edison’s San Onofre Community Engagement Panel, they included

a UC professor of nuclear engineering, an attorney from the Natural Resources Defense

Council, and a former utility commissioner. They agreed that there was little hope of

congressional action on the spent-fuel problem and a lack of political will to face up to it.

The consensus of the panel was that the way ahead is to work toward state and regional

solutions and the changes in the law that would permit them.

The GAO report called attention to the need to inform the public about spent-fuel management issues.

We can no longer bury our heads in the sand and pretend this threat does not exist. We

encourage Lagunans to write their representatives at the local, state and federal levels

(http://www.lagunabeachcity.net/living/representatives.asp) asking for action on the

management problem. A groundswell of public opinion may be needed to force Congress to act, and it can start here.

 

Johanna Felder, Laguna Beach

The author is president of Village Laguna.

 

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1 COMMENT

  1. It is great you plan on informing the public. Will you be informing the public of the fact that NO person has ever been killed or injured from commercial used nuclear fuel? Compare that record of safety to the hundreds of thousands who have died as a result of dam failures and the possibility of further death and mayhem if earthquakes knock out our current dams. Keep in mind that NO earthquake has EVER damaged a commercial nuclear plant including its used fuel such that the public was in danger due to a failure of safety systems. The earthquake that Japan suffered in March of 2011 caused a dam to fail that killed 8 people; that is 8 people more than were killed or are expected to die by the nuclear plants at Fukushima.
    Listen to what independent investigator and chairman of the CEP, David Victor, had to say about those who would unnecessarily alarm the public regarding used nuclear fuel:

    “First, there is simply zero basis for the highly emotive statements that I have seen in the press and various other locations for the view that long-term storage of the fuel on site at SONGS has put “another Fukushima” or “another Chernobyl” in our backyard. We do the public a disservice with such emotive language since it creates images that are not in any way rooted in the technical assessment of the real risks.”
    I would echo that sentiment…it does no good to unnecessarily alarm the public as the anti-nukes have been doing.

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