Michele Kearney's Nuclear Wire

Major Energy and Environmental News and Commentary affecting the Nuclear Industry.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

The Perils of Tritium San Onofre: a Trillion Dollar Threat to SoCal By RUSSELL D. HOFFMAN

The Perils of Tritium

San Onofre: a Trillion Dollar Threat to SoCal

By RUSSELL D. HOFFMAN
San Onofre Nuclear Waste Generating Station (SONWGS) is a pair of aging Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs) in the midst of Southern California's burgeoning, vibrant, forward-thinking, technologically advanced, interconnected, health-conscious population.
It doesn't belong here at all, and it's well past time to get rid of it.
Conceived in the 1950s, the two units that still operate were designed in the 60s, built in the 70s, went online in the 80s, and have been falling apart ever since. And they have been piling up nuclear waste along our coast ever since, too -- at the horrific rate of 500 pounds per day, with nowhere to put it. There are over eight million pounds of so-called "spent fuel" at the site right now -- making it potentially worse than Fukushima in an accident.
And "spent fuel" is quite a euphemism, considering that after use, it is about 10 million times MORE hazardous than before it went into the reactor. And it will remain so for tens of thousands of years. After use, it's full of biological-systems targeting fission products.

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