Letters: It\'s time for SONGS to end

Tag : marine water boiler

When nuclear proponents saw San Onofre State Beach after WWII, theyimagined the perfect spot to place a nuclear reactor, cooled by seawater, on a military base, miles from anywhere, except for the tinyvillage four miles north, San Clemente.
Places like San Onofre were imagined. The San Onofre NuclearGenerating Station's other product, electricity, sealed the deal.
SONGS' first envisioning / imagining came 53 years ago. TV wasbarely here. Much of America still listened to radio. A computerhard drive filled an airplane hangar. Today, your iPhone issmarter.
Today, electricity is being generated by sun (no moving parts),wind (a fan blade) and the sea (wave motion). With a gazillion morecars on California's highways than in 1955, we emit a fraction ofthe bad stuff vehicles spewed back then. Pretty darned smart.
In the 40 or so years SONGS has been online, how does it compare intoday's smart world?
Not smart.
As for moving parts, SONGS sucks and flushes billions of gallons ofcooling sea water daily, 24/7, 365 a year (with periodic shutdownsfor repair and service).
Sucking in billions of gallons daily through 18-foot-diametersubmerged pipes sticking way out to sea, then spitting SONGS'overheated water back out to sea through another 18-foot-diameterpipe takes a lot of moving parts and power, moving a lot of marinelife in and out, in and out.
SONGS leaks tritium. That's nuke juice you don't want to get onyou. It absorbs into human flesh. SONGS' two monster flush pipespump tritium back out to sea. It's part of the process.
What's out at sea at SONGS: fish and surfers. By the tens ofthousands each.
SONGS official's say tritium is diluted by water. At one point inhistory, doctors bled patients, believing they were curing them.Wonder what the medical report will read on tritium's long-termhealth effects on surfers and fish in 100 years?
SONGS powers some 2.5 million homes 65 miles away. That takesenormous transmission lines, clearly visible overhead at I-5 at SanOnofre.
But what if those monster electrical lines to Riverside and theirrusty, leaking old technology, fish-sucking, tritium-spewing nukedouble boiler weren't here at all?
Can you imagine that? Try to.
With those many billions of our ratepayer dollars required toremake SONGS in the same old-fashioned, ocean-sucking, leaking,rusting, tritium-poison-spewing way, what would it cost to eraseSONGS altogether?
How about this: create a new no-moving-parts renewable-energysource in Riverside (they get lots of sun). Eliminate 65 miles ofgargantuan overhead wires and their massive structural supports.Then remove SONGS lock, stock and especially those mystery barrelsstored onsite.
If you can imagine SONGS gone, that's a start. Because the rest ofthe equation is just technology. The billions will be spent anyway.Let's spend them in a way that matches our time. Smartly.