So PG&E prodded business and community leaders for a speedier approval of relicensing by claiming there are economic advantages to a nuclear plant (“PG&E makes hard sell for Diablo Canyon renewal,” Tribune, June 29)? Did chief nuclear officer Halpin mention that there is no policy for the disposal of nuclear waste?
Now that the myth of storage in Yucca Mountain has gone up into thin air, nuclear waste continues to be stored plant-side in cooling pools and hard casks. Did Mr. Halpin give any idea of what the economic picture will be if we are to be a de facto nuclear storage site with an annually increasing waste pile? Ad infinitum? (Some of the nuclear waste elements remain dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.)
What will that do to real estate values? And did he talk about the economic drawback of the potential of a Chernobyl or Fukushima-type disaster? Is there any insurance company willing to carry the burden of insuring against that possibility? But, wait, wait, we the taxpayers carry that burden! No insurance company is willing to insure against nuclear disaster!
Does the NRC have a plan for the waste?: the Alice-in-Wonderland-like “Nuclear Waste Confidence Plan.” (Who thought up that name: confidence?) There is mention of the hope of finding a community willing to receive and keep nuclear waste. Have we been asked to volunteer for that job? Did we get volunteered? By whom? When?
Now as to the wonderful charitable support from PG&E for our community. Whose money is that anyway? Should it not be returned to the rate-payers who are going to be charged increased rates?
Industries, even dog owners, are required to clean up their mess; why not nuclear plants? And if they can’t, shouldn’t they be made to stop producing waste?
-- Henriette Groot - Los Osos
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