Listening to the radio last Saturday morning, a pleasing piece of Americana music ended, and an alien siren sound began. The interruption concluded with the announcement, “If this were an actual emergency … .”
Cleaning out a drawer yesterday, I came across an envelope. Inside, were six now expired tablets of potassium iodide designed to protect the thyroid gland from the release of radioactive iodine in the event of a nuclear power plant emergency.
I have faults, something I share in common with our resplendent coast. Despite her beauty, she has the Hosgri, the Shoreline, and by last count, two other faults. Her seismological faults worry me more than my own faults, particularly in how they sit in such close proximity to the Diablo Canyon Power Plant.
The possibility of an accident. The unsolved question of how to store the existing 3 million-plus pounds of radioactive waste already sitting on our coastline. So many questions come to mind about the potential problems we’re leaving for our children and our grandchildren. We are the ancestors. One action in the direction of a habitable future is to shut Diablo down sooner than later.
Michele Flom
San Luis Obispo
This article appears in Sep 1-11, 2022.
So, we never needed the Potassium Iodide.
Isn’t that good news?
If you bother to keep up on advances in nuclear power generation, you would not be worried about the future as nuclear power becomes safer and safer.
Gail Katherine Lightfoot
If so why can’t nuclear power get private insurance to cover it?
The nuclear operators’ mutual arrangement for insuring the actual plants against accidents is Nuclear Electric Insurance Limited (NEIL) which is well funded (a $5 billion surplus) and cooperates closely with the American Nuclear Insurers pool.
https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collect…
Fukushima
More than 120,000 buildings were destroyed, 278,000 were half-destroyed and 726,000 were partially destroyed, according to the agency. The direct financial damage from the disaster is estimated to be about $199 billion dollars (about 16.9 trillion yen), according to the Japanese government.Feb 25, 2022
“Fukushima”
Thanks Jon K. And that’s not to mention the 250 million gallons of nuclear waste from Fukushima that the Japanese are about to dump into the Pacific Ocean. Fish and Chips, anyone?
After nearly 40 years of nearly perfect operation, fear, dread, and lies continue to be spread about this plant. Disappointing that some people cannot learn, grow, and accept.