Orange County Weekly: The Cuban Solution

[question everything]

March 11 - 17, 2005

The Cuban Solution

San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is running out of steam. But Edison has a crazy plan to save it.

by NICK SCHOU

Thanks to a quartet of rusting steam generators locked inside its highly radioactive depths, the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) will rumble to a halt in four to five years. That’s more than a decade short of 2022, when the nuclear plant’s operating license expires. But fear not: Southern California Edison, which owns the reactor, has a plan to keep SONGS ticking for at least another few decades.

To wit: Edison is seeking a permit from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to rip a 28-square-foot hole in the side of the nuke plant’s containment vessel, pull out the decaying steam generators, bury them in the dirt until they can find a better place to store them—and then patch up the hole.

“The entire process will be safe,” promised Edison spokesman Ray Golden. “Replacement of steam generators has been successfully completed at most nuclear power plants in the United States and worldwide. San Onofre is one of the last nuclear-power plants in the U.S. to undergo steam-generator replacement. . . . We anticipate putting the new ones into service around 2010, assuming we get CPUC approval to do so.”

Environmental groups such as the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, California Earth Corps and the Committee to Bridge the Gap are doing everything possible to keep that from happening. They’re actively pressuring the CPUC to deny Edison a permit to replace the steam generators at SONGS.

More..
http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/05/27/news-schou2.php

[Mika]

1. Wrong wrong wrong

"In Cuba, he points out, everybody is still driving American cars from the 1950s."


That is patently untrue. There are more small cars of European and Asian manufacture in Cuba than there are American gas guzzlers.

Been there. Seen it.

The comparative premise is completely untrue, but easily sold to travel banned ignorant-of-anything-Cuba Americans.



on edit: I know my comment is not nuke related, but i just wanted point out that the comparative premise (and the premise of the title of the article) is false.

[question everything]

2. Tell them!

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[blindpig]

3. not only that

but quite a few of those old "American" cars sport Soviet manufacture replacement engines. They're just stylin'.