OPINION: Anti-Nuke Groups Outline Arguments for CPUC

Editor's Note: The following are talking points released by the anti-nuclear group San Clemente Green, Citizens' Oversight Committee and other fellow activist groups leading up to the California Public Utilities Commission Meeting Thursday, one of the first in a series of hearings to decide whether Southern California Edison owes ratepayers money back for supporting its San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which has been shuttered for a year:

There should be no further delay. The CPUC analyzed the steam generator project before it was originally approved and found that operating the plant with only one steam generator was not financially viable. Why spent months and years investigating it again? Close it now.

Ratepayers of the monopolies SCE and SDG&E must be REFUNDED the hundreds of millions of dollars already paid through electricity bills for these defective steam generators and not charged for the rest of the $700 Million cost of these flawed-design steam generators.

Ratepayers must be REFUNDED the hundreds of millions of dollars already paid through electricity bills for all the inspections, regulatory costs, and replacement power that Edison's defective steam generator design has cost us.

Edison must be STOPPED from running up the bills in the hundreds of millions of dollars to get the defective San Onofre Unit 2 nuclear reactor ready to restart, in advance of the requisite approval by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

San Onofre must be DECOMMISSIONED NOW to cut ratepayer losses and invest those saved funds in our renewable-energy economy. Ratepayers have already paid $3 Billion into the Decommissioning Trust Fund for this nuclear power plant through electric bills, and it is time to put that money to use.

SCE must be held accountable for not filing the actual costs incurred for the Steam Generator project when the project was "done" as required by the CPUC, but instead delayed the report for two years after they had told the investor community that the project was done.

The CPUC is responsible for making sure our money is spent wisely. This project had almost no oversight, giving Edison a blank check lump sum and conducting no project reviews to insure the replacement steam generators would function as specified and to insure that funds were actually used for the project and not skimmed as profit by Edison.

Community Outreach Funds Misdirected by SCE:

SCE sees "community outreach" as a treasure chest of funds to polish their tarnished image through targeted public relations campaigns, including donations to various community groups and costly advertising to tout the "safety" of the innocuously acronymed "SONGS".

The community sees "community outreach" as educating the public about crucial safety and evacuation procedures in the event of an accident. This view of community outreach has not been achieved despite the funds dedicated for that purpose, at least in the view of the public.

Consider the following:

Most hospitals do not have radiation detectors required to properly shelter-in-place, nor can they provide decontamination services on a large scale. All the nearly 100 Community Clinics in the area and most skilled nursing facilities, teachers and school administrators are untrained to shelter in place for a radiological event and do not have the needed equipment. We still don't know how to shelter in place children on a field trip, on a school bus, or at a high school football game. We still haven't figured out how to decontaminate the inside of an ambulance or police/sheriff's cars, or how to protect first responders out in the field during an event. We still haven't figured out how to communicate a large scale radiological event to the multi-cultural population which speaks 85 different languages in San Diego County alone.

All of these issues require intensive education and training which costs taxpayer dollars, and in tight budgets, health facilities have to prioritize Emergency Response to issues such as disease outbreaks or natural disaster related issues such as fire and earthquakes. Federal HRSA funding to hospitals for Emergency Preparedness and Response training and equipment is scheduled to end THIS YEAR.