Trouble brewing at the San Onofre nuclear power plant in CA

Paul Gunter, Beyond Nuclear joins Thom Hartmann. All is not well at the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant in California - where federal investigators have found major designs flaws in the plant. Just what kind of risk do these designs flaws pose - and could we be looking at a future nuclear disaster on the West Coast? And are our fish getting more and more radioactive? Should you bring a geiger counter to the restaurant or supermarket yet?

• Category

  News & Politics

[CrudeDude]

"But never a radiation leak."

WRONG!

Now YOU are "talking out YOUR ass".

[CrudeDude]

The tube leaked primary coolant. It released radioactivity. There are no valves on each tube.

[AkshonClips]

RT talks out of their asses. Their was a tube leak. But never a radiation leak. Their is that big containment dome for a reason. Fukushima had no dome like SONGS. Tubes leak all the time and they simply shut a valve for a particular tube and take it off line from the rest.

[Squirrelcaster]

Safety aside for a moment, one of the most pertinent comments I've seen on another SONGS related vid from a local resident was how the utilty bill just keeps going up and up. Nuclear energy was touted as safe, clean and efficent. In the simple task of producing power it's very efficient, but if you include stuff like spent fuel disposal(there's still no solution and that's a BIG issue), cost of accidents/clean ups, any environmental/human damage, it's dirty and expensive to say the least.

[CrudeDude]

San Onofre is NOT "back up and running"

Nice try. Better do your homework.

[Squirrelcaster]

What it is... more than enough time that you're long gone from your job/position and paid off your mansion/island to live in, which would garanteed never be near a nuclear reactor, lol.

[Squirrelcaster]

Agreed, Fukushima MK1 boiling water reactor, as opposed to pressurised type in San Onofre, US does still has several GE MK1 designs in operation...they a piece of dangerous equipment if shit goes down, it's not simple to do with back up systems etc, but if you lose cooling flow for any extended time...irreversible trouble, but that goes for any reactor, coolant flow is 'everything'. You can shut down as Japan did, but you've still got shit loads of decay heat, enough to melt down/through.

[CrudeDude]

Yes, that' the great thing about ionizing radiation; they can say confidently "There's no immediate health danger" with honesty, because they know that leukemia and cancer won't be presented for years

It all depends on how you interpret the word "immediate".

Is immediate tomorrow?

Next month? Next year?