The San Onofre beachside nuclear waste storage facility is DEFECTIVE and must be RECALLED to prevent nuclear disaster in Southern California and beyond.
To avoid nuclear disaster:
We urgently petition our state and federal elected officials and commissioners to take immediate action to require Southern California Edison:
1. STOP loading highly radioactive fuel waste into the defective Holtec storage system and RECALL the Holtec nuclear storage system.
2. REPACKAGE all San Onofre nuclear waste into thick-wall transportable storage casks that are designed to be inspected, maintained and monitored to PREVENT radioactive leaks and explosions.
3. MOVE the new thick-wall casks to higher ground, away from coastal flood hazards, and STORE the the casks in reinforced buildings.
Note: The waste must be repackaged BEFORE it can be moved. The NRC requires both the canisters and the fuel inside to be inspected before transport, but the Holtec system is not designed for inspection of either.
The Holtec system is a Lemon.
The bad engineering design cannot be remedied with training and procedural improvements. The thin-wall canisters (only 5/8" thick) are vulnerable to cracking, but technology does not exist to inspect for cracks or repair cracking canisters. There is no plan in place to stop or contain a cracking, radiation-leaking, potentially exploding canister. This is serious; each canister contains roughly a Chernobyl nuclear disaster of radiation.
What’s worse, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently admitted that the design of the Holtec loading system likely causes damage to the canisters as they are lowered into the steel lined storage holes, due to unavoidable "metal to metal" contact. The damage initiates cracking.
So far, the NRC has refused to recall this defective system.
The Holtec nuclear waste storage system poses a clear and imminent danger to the health and lives of the citizens, and poses potential financial and ecological disaster for the state of California, and beyond. It should be RECALLED immediately, and the waste repackaged, as soon as possible, into thick-wall casks (10" to 19.75" thick) that can be inspected, repaired, monitored and transported.
For more information and source documents visit https://sanonofresafety.org
Listen to the President of Holtec explain that a through-wall crack will release millions of curies of radionuclides and it's not practical to try to repair a crack, even if you could find it. https://youtu.be/euaFZt0YPi4
