San Onofre Shuts down, Hooray!

Wow, what an amazing day! I was working out in the yard and oblivious to the announcement until my wife Jill said I was receiving lots of texts and calls. It came as a surprise, not because we didn't ever expect it to happen, but I figured if Edison waited a full year after knowing the plant was doomed (both root cause evaluations were done by May 7, 2012) and had blindly pursued restart of Unit 2 regardless of the cost and obvious reliability, then why not continue to blindly pursue this absurd notion for another year?

I talked one-on-one with [Edison Chair and CEO] Ted Craver at the St. Regis Hotel affair -- that's when they revealed the devastating truth of the misdesign -- and I told him that he should cut his losses and shut it down now. Trying to restart it and analyze it again after 5 months was only going to put the whole community through agony and make Edison look like an idiot. It took him an extra year to follow my advice, but I always guessed the plant would never restart.

The ruling by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board -- unanimous in favor of the assertion by Friends of the Earth (thank you FOE!) that the CAL process they were going through was a de-facto license amendment process -- was probably the silver bullet. But I think the Star Trek parody was also something they would not be able to bear if they continued this. I was thinking that the engineers in charge of this blunder were saying "Beam me up Scotty!" to get out of their predicament... and that in subsequent events we should don Klingon or Romulin masks to leverage their sophomoric actions during the time they were supposed to be providing oversight to the steam generator project.

We worked hard... and it worked. I knew that there was a good chance we could be successful on this one, thanks mostly to the monumental blunder by Edison and MHI. As usual, these corporations have a mindset that they can do no wrong, and they continually push the envelope to maximize profits regardless of any risk, damage to the environment, or cost to the citizenry. One key ingredient is not just people who show up, but people who do their homework and can take those in the corp. and govt agencies to the carpet on facts, not emotion.

Another aspect that I think is important -- and not everyone agrees with me on this -- is to have many independent organizations that are not repeating the same message. Instead, I think it is more powerful to have many orgs and people attacking the same problem from different directions and tactics. For one, it makes it harder for the activist groups to be infiltrated and controlled (or split up with internal dissent) but also it makes nearly impossible for the corporate "team" to deal with all of the different tactics being used.

Frankly, if we were not there saying "no" the utility would do whatever they want, because it is clear that the NRC and CPUC are already rigged in their favor.

I had the pleasure of working with some really great people, some for the first time and others with a track record. These people went the extra mile with their own time and resources, because they understood that this issue is probably the most important issue facing us. There isn't anything else that is as devastating if one little tube breaks and makes SoCal an evacuation zone. What is it about Fukushima that they don't understand? (Thanks Tom English!)

I want to particularly thank Gene Stone, Gary Headrick, Laurie Scott Headrick, Donna Gilmore, Carol Jahnkow, Martha Sullivan, Chrystal Coleman, Cathy Iwane, Joe Holtzman, Torgen Johnson, Ace Hoffman, Deanna Polk, Marcia Patt, Don Leichtling, Patrician Borchmann, Jeff Steinmetz, Grace van Thillo, Myla Reson, Beverly Findlay-Kaneko, Randy Ziglar, Miki Bay, Roger Johnson, Josephine Piarulli, Derek and Nancy Casady, Mike Aguirre, Peggy Budd, Cristie Paris, Libbe HaLevy (Nuclear Hotseat) and many more... plus the orgs Friend of the Earth, TURN, and Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility (ARNR) Sierra club, EON, etc. Special thanks to Barbara Boxer and Negative thanks to Daryl Issa for doing nothing and concentrating on bogus investigations. Dan Hirsch's report on tube wear was critical in getting past the smokescreen from SCE on tube wear. Also thank you to all those people who spoke at our rallies, Mimi Kennedy, for example. (I'm not sure why auto-tagging isn't working, maybe it is limited to just a few names).

We still have more to do. I figure there are four tasks ahead of us.

1. Deal with the decommissioning process, which will need constant oversight (and should probably have a committee of citizens providing detailed oversight of every step)

2. making sure Edison does not ream ratepayers for their blunders (although frankly, I would rather see Edison feel good and get the plant closed, so we can entice other plants to close, with this an an example) The Coalition to Decommission San Onofre, which is a party at the CPUC hearings, will be continuing this effort, and I must say has new credibility now that the decision has been made in our direction. This can be an expensive process, so we appreciate your continued support.

3. Make sure plant employees are treated fairly, retrained and helped to find new jobs (there are tons of jobs in the renewable sector) and

4. Continue to push for distributed solar and other renewables in sunny SoCal. Despite all the green talk, the utilities are avoiding this like the plague (since they don't get to sell us power that we generate ourselves)... and we must also not forget that the cheapest power is the power we do not use at all through efficiency improvements and conservation.

I must say that one key element of this effort was the positive and non-confrontational interaction with elected officials and other orgs like the Ca Dem Party (thank you Martha Sullivan, Judy Jones, David Sonneborn, Richard Matthews, and union officials who held their nose and allowed it to be approved.)

Again, it was a pleasure working with you during this phase, and I look forward to the challenge before us. Live long and prosper! :)

--Ray Lutz

See more info at http://www.ShutSanOnofre.org