Category: Health

With more and more doubts about San Onofre’s safety and future being raised on a nearly daily basis, San Diego and Southern California activists are converging on utility giant Sempra as a focal point for their protests here locally. And there are apply pressure that is mounting across California.

For instance, activists will be presenting a “Demand Letter” to Sempra Energy Chair Donald Felsinger on Friday, May 18th. And a rally is being held at Sempra headquarters in downtown San Diego on Wednesday, May 23rd – part of a state-wide coordinated day of actions at utilities. Actions will also be held in Irvine, San Francisco, Oakland, and Fresno – all to demand a nuclear-free California.

By Joe Flynn

Dear Grover Norquist:

Top Ten Reasons why most people would not want government reduced to the size they could drown in a bathtub, as you so smugly recommend.

10. A water main has broken in front of your house, and you don’t have enough water to flush your toilet, let alone, drown anything in the tub.

9. Neighborhood kids have piled rocks in a sewer manhole plugging the line and what appear to be date expired Baby Ruth’s are floating down the street.

8. Your residential neighbor is in the process of constructing a building in his front yard, which coincidentally, blocks your prized view of the ocean.

Engineer warns that tube plugging and low power operation are risky “non-solutions”

By Friends of the Earth / May 15, 2012

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Southern California Edison avoided federal regulatory guidelines when replacing defective steam generators at the San Onofre nuclear power plant — a costly mistake that can’t be fixed by plugging the tubes that carry radioactive steam or by operating the plant at reduced power, according to a new report released today by Friends of the Earth.

The content of the report by nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen details the significant design changes that should have triggered a license review which would have uncovered problems that subsequently led to serious damage and the release of radiation from the defective equipment at San Onofre in January.

By James Hansen / New York Times / May 9, 2012

GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”

If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.

Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.

I like to think that my partner and I have a healthy amount of sex. In fact, that’s exactly what I think. But I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s nowhere near the amount that my partner would like to be having.

But we certainly don’t have sex every day.

There are the usual excuses for that: I’m busy. I’m tired. When I’m not sleeping, I’m being a stepmother, working and going to school. By the time I get home at night, I’m exhausted and feel generally grungy. I want to eat dinner and decompress with some TV before passing out.

So what’s the magical number of times in a week to make love? Is there one? What if I don’t hit it? Does it all start to add up to a time when he feels we’re no longer compatible?

Here is the facebook link: http://www.facebook.com/events/402584333087116/424500454228837/

Pagan religions believe there are three stages to a woman’s life; the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone. The Maiden is mostly concerned with her own life and thinking about what the future holds for her. The Mother centers on caring for the family, children, partners and parents. The Crone (once a dreaded word that conjured images of the crazy cat lady who lived on the edge of society) has “been there, done that” and can refocus on herself and then, if she’s a mind to, the world at large.

A Very Personal Journey

You know, I never really had an issue with getting older. That was until, one day, I starting feeling older. Every once in a while I would catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror or in a photograph… And I’d think, who in the hell is that old woman? She looks like my mother!

Fire breaks out at San Onofre on Friday – took nearly an hour to contain

Editor: It seems we hear new problems about the San Onofre nuclear power plant every time we open a newspaper or watch the news. Apparently, yesterday, a fire broke out at the plant that took nearly an hour to contain.

The U-T reports: “on Friday, the plant operator reported that a fire broke out in the plant’s turbine room outside the reactor containment dome on the northern reactor, Unit 2. The fire was reported at 12:49 p.m. and was extinguished at 1:41 p.m. by the plant’s own fire department. There were no injuries, Edison said in a written statement. The fire took place “in an electrical panel,” the statement said. Edison spokeswoman Jennifer Manfre could provide no further description of the fire and its cause was still unclear.”

Friends of the Earth / April 20, 2012

San Francisco, Calif. — The Japanese firm responsible for fabricating the failing steam generators at Southern California Edison’s San Onofre nuclear reactors announced today that it is undertaking analyses of the causes of the serious, unresolved safety problems.

In papers filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the firm, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, revealed that its reviews will extend at least through the end of August — ensuring that the troubled reactors will not be able to operate through the summer.

Rally Commemorates Chernobyl, TMI, continuing meltdown at Fukushima on Sunday, from Noon to 3pm

“Shut Down San Onofre” Momentum builds following Radioactivity Release and Design-Error Shutdown of the Plant

April 20, 2012 (SAN ONOFRE) – Nuclear Industry Expert Daniel Hirsch and Irvine City Councilmember Larry Agran will join a dozen other speakers at the “Shut Down San Onofre” rally at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station on Sunday, April 29, to support the view that the reactor should never be restarted. The event occurs just after the 26th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, the 33-year anniversary of the Three-Mile Island accident, and the first Fukushima Daiichi meltdown anniversary — an accident which is far from over.

New Analysis Comes Following Grudging Edison Admission That Reactors 2 and 3 Face Same Dangerous Issues

By ROSE / April 12, 2012

A follow-up analysis released today by one of the nation’s leading independent nuclear engineers provides the first detailed picture of the extent of design changes made by Southern California Edison at its San Onofre nuclear reactors. These changes likely led to the equipment degradation and failure that has forced the reactors offline, pending a thorough and comprehensive investigation.

The study by Arnie Gundersen and Fairewinds Associates is the second in a series commissioned by nuclear watchdog Friends of the Earth. It is available online here.

It was a little over a week ago – on April 5th – that hundreds of angry rate payers jammed two public hearings on SDG&E’s plan to pass on their costs from the recent fires of 2007 to the public. In addition, charges were made that the officers holding the California Public Utility Commission hearing had conflicts of interest as they were beholden to the utility company.

An estimated 650 people attended the two public hearings held at the Al Bahr Shriner Center, so the East County Magazine reported. And most were opposed, apparently, to SDG&E’s proposed `Wildfire Expense Balancing Account’ (WEBA) plan. By far most who addressed the hearing, spoke against the WEBA plan, …

Vietnam Has Left Town, Say Hello to the New Syndrome on the Block

By Tom Engelhardt / TomDispatch.com / April 10, 2012

Take off your hat. Taps is playing. Almost four decades late, the Vietnam War and its post-war spawn, the Vietnam Syndrome, are finally heading for their American grave. It may qualify as the longest attempted burial in history. Last words — both eulogies and curses — have been offered too many times to mention, and yet no American administration found the silver bullet that would put that war away for keeps.

(OB Rag Editor: please go to the original post for all the many links – TomDispatch.com )