Re: “A pact with the devil”

A PG&E spokesperson has responded to this item and included a video of a "simulated" aircraft strike on a dry cask. But that test was rigged: There was no fuel, and hence no fire, and even more absurd, there were no jet engine turbine shafts involved. Those are the real danger in an airplane strike scenario: The turbine shafts have the greatest kinetic energy and the fuel can only burn for a few minutes before it will super-heat the canister, causing it to crack.

Additionally, many of us have attended numerous so-called "public hearings" regarding nuclear issues, including nuclear waste (I myself have probably attended well over 100 such meetings, from Sacramento to San Diego, including several in the SLO area). We know that just because the public input was supposedly sought, it sure wasn't listened to! For example, try as we might, the CPUC never once considered the possibility that San Onofre's replacement steam generators would fail -- all financial calculations assumed complete success, which was not how things turned out. By law (a crazy law!) state regulators cannot consider unsafe conditions at a nuclear power plant at all -- they are required to believe everything will work as planned.

Perhaps most disingenuous on the part of PG&E are their claims about supporting "off-site storage" of nuclear waste. What they really support is ending their own liability for the waste -- every offsite plan that's been proposed so far has required releasing the makers of the waste from liability, and giving that liability not to the operator of the waste dump, but to the public. It's a scam.