ML13155A061
| ML13155A061 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | San Onofre  |
| Issue date: | 05/15/2013 |
| From: | Iwane C - No Known Affiliation |
| To: | Rules, Announcements, and Directives Branch |
| References | |
| 78FR22576 00556 | |
| Download: ML13155A061 (4) | |
Text
Joosten, Sandy From: cathy iwane [cathyiwane@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 3:12 PM To: CHAIRMAN Resource; CMRMAGWOOD Resource; CMRAPOSTOLAKIS Resource; CMRSVINICKI Resource; CMROSTENDORFF Resource
Subject:
My worried letter to Tom Amabile of San Diego Office of Emergency Services 4( /qc[ w Mr. Tom Amabile Senior Emergency Services Coordinator -28 F San Diego County Office of Emergency Servicesj Cr) 5580 Overland Ave #100, San Diego, California 9212 r
.C.
April 2, 2013
Dear Mr. Amabile,
Today I write to you from the perspective of a mother of two daughters, married to a Japanese national, having evacuated Japan after 25 years due to the ongoing triple nuclear meltdowns in Fukushima. We lived with a geiger counter for a year, measuring radioactive contamination in foods and ambient background before making the decision to return to my native California. My husband remains in Japan. Our city, Wakayama, is 380 miles from the Fukushima (the approximate distance from San Francisco to San Diego) reactors and yet, we measured locally caught fish to be highly radioactive in September of 2011. In October, 2011, a City Councilman's soils tests revealed radioactive Cesium to be 5 times pre-Fukushima levels at a park near my home. In May of 2011, after researching ingredients in my daughter's school lunches, I found that only 60%
of them were locally procured. The remainder came from outside areas, including near Fukushima. Despite having taught English at this school for 10 years, my daughter opted out of the school lunch program as I prepared a lunch each day of solely local ingredients. My daughter was forced lie to classmates that she had allergies, thus her homemade lunch. Her principal told me it would cause panic among the PTA at school, to reveal my research with the other mothers.
Presently, 43% of children who remain in Fukushima are diagnosed with tumors and irregularities of the thyroid gland due to radioactive exposure. In Tokyo, radioactive milk from Fukushima is diluted with other milk and is legally being served to school children for lunch. This disaster has torn apart families and communities throughout Japan. Distrust in the government is rampant. TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company, owners of the Fukushima reactors) assured the public that Fukushima Daiichi could withstand large tsunamis and earthquakes. However in hindsight, it was a combination of lack of regulatory agency SUNSI Review Complete Template = ADM - 013 1 E-RIDS= ADM-03 Add= B. Benney (bjb)
oversight and lack of proper emergency response and back-up systems failure that is blamed for the accident. TEPCO has finally come clean with a semblance of accountability:
http ://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/29/fukushima-disaster-tepco-blame n 2978681.html?utm hp ref=fb&src=sp&comm ref=false No one EVER imagined the magnitude of 3/11. Here is my report from November of 2011, on a friend, Ikuko Nitta, who evacuated Fukushima to my home in Wakayama. She now resides with her children in Malaysia: http://www.dianuke.org/wakayama-ladies-against-nukes-a-report/
I cannot stress enough that the 3 nuclear reactors in Fukushima CONTINUE to melt down, releasing tons and tons of radioactive run-off water into the Pacific Ocean EVERY day for the last two years. Contrary to popular belief, this disaster is nowhere near being over. While the Japanese government and TEPCO feign decontamination, it is fact that these reactors are still too hot to cap because doing so would cause explosions of unbelievable scale. It is so hot and highly contaminated, in fact, that human workers cannot go inside to commence "repairs". Robots cannot even withstand the high radiation; they only cease to operate.
Commissioner William Magwood of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, speaking at a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in Washington last year, said that it is difficult to underestimate the challenge of removing radioactive material from the area. "There will need to be new technologies created" to accomplish the clean-up, Mr. Magwood said. "And some of these technologies don't exist yet." http://blogs.wsj.com/iapanrealtime/2012/09/13/fukushima-watch-japanese-have-lost-faith-in-nuclear-power-u-s-regulator/ Ask any expert and you will find conservative estimates of it taking 10 years or more for these reactors to cool down enough to cap and commence decommissioning. Meanwhile, timed pressure releases of steam are released each week into the environment; into our environment. I can attest to the fact that contamination in NO WAY stays within the evacuation zone of 20 km in Fukushima. 26 out of 47 prefectures in Japan are found to have trace levels of radioactive Cesium in the their municipal water supplies. We are talking about a country that, if we put all of the islands together, is the size of California.
Ironically, in January of 2012 while packing our bags for California, I signed the lease to our present living space just days before the radioactive releases at SONGS, prompting the reactors #2 and #3 to go offline.
What were the chances that I'd be running from a triple nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, only to agonize over the risks and dangers of Edison's proposed restart of reactor #2 at 70% power? Essentially, my daughters would be rendered laboratory guinea pigs in Southern Cal Edison's nuclear experiment, because it is common knowledge that the only way to test the safety of unit #2 is by running it for a 5 month period. We live 35 miles downwind of SONGS, in Solana Beach.
Mr. Amabile, I took the opportunity to review your agency's "SAN DIEGO COUNTY NUCLEAR POWER PLANT EMERGENCY RESPONSE PLAN" (dated January, 2011). On page x, in the "RECORD OF REVISIONS", I am quite frankly shocked to find that there has been no additional recording lending to any revision of emergency planning FOR TWO YEARS. Essentially, the Office of Emergency Services for San Diego County has swept the reality of the Fukushima Daiichi triple meltdowns under the rug. I cannot stress enough your dire responsibility for the safety of the 2
publiC.. You 'are vested with protecting us and yet, two years have passed since the Fukushirna disaster and there is nothing in your Response Plan to show for the many lessons of Fukushima.
On page 40, under section F "Protect Actions", "Sheltering" is mentioned. However, there is no mention of sheltering in place for our kids when they are entrusted to their educators at school. My daughters have attended schools here for close to one year and school officials have yet to mention any plan for sheltering in place at school. There is no training program for our teachers to do this, period. How does one "shelter in place" during a sports event? And should a radioactive incident occur, it is common knowledge that there are NOT enough school buses to evacuate students to safety. On page 49, under "Evacuation", your plan stipulates citizens driving themselves in their personal vehicles to evacuate. Do you envision us all driving to the schools to pick up our children? Imagine the 8.4 million residents living within a 50 mile radius of SONGS, all driving their own vehicles on Highway 5 to evacuate. I seen nothing more than grid-lock, panic and a failed plan for evacuation.
In March of 2011, all registered American ex-patriots in Japan were sent emails by the US Embassy, urging us to evacuate Japan if we lived within 50 miles of the accident: http://poorrichards-blog.blocispot.com/2011/03/top-us-officials-jaRan-nuclear-reactor.html. Since my return to the US, I have always found it an insult that we don't follow this evacuation protocol on our own soil.
Moreover, this document briefly mentions "Terrorism", but only in the context of the September 11 kamikaze terrorist disasters at the Pentagon and The World Trade Center. It is very important to comprehend this threat from all angles. We live in a digital world where the security systems of our very government, not to mention nuclear power plants, are already under siege by cyber-threat: http://www.upi.com/Science News/Technology/2012/06/20
/Ira n-corm pla ins-of-cyberterrorism/U PI-33471340206675/
I implore you, Mr. Amabile, to embrace your responsibility to the general public and comb through "SAN DIEGO COUNTY NUCLEAR POWER PLANT EMERGENCY RESPONSE PLAN" with a fine tooth comb. It is sadly remiss with gaping holes.
Finally, A growing number of Southern California City Councils, Mayors, Congressmembers, and School Boards have added their voices to concerned citizen's call for an adjudicated License Amendment hearing process prior to restart of the crippled San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant in defense of their residents and businesses, includingDel Mar, Encinitas, Irvine, Laguna Beach, Mission Viejo, San Diego Mayor and San Diego Unified School District, Santa Monica, Solana Beach and Cong. Juan Vargas (CD 51). The Cities of Escondido, San Clemente and Vista have joined in Senators Boxer's and Feinstein's 3
calls for the NRC to modify its policies and procedures in light of Fukushima meltdowns, to further protect their residents and businesses. We know that much of this public outcry stems from an apparent lack of transparency concerning both the NRC and Southern California Edison. Put simply, Representative Markey and Senator Boxer had to call for the NRC to release the secret Mitsubishi Heavy Industries documents concerning the replacement steam generators at San Onofre because no other public agency would take responsibility for the safety of the public.
I am asking you to error on the side of safety by taking a close look at SONGS, a nuclear power plant on life support, which is costing the ratepayers $60 million per month while it idles, producing not a watt of energy for over a year. Is this the sort of debacle, if even a small nuclear "incident" were to occur, that you would want on your watch at OES? Please contemplate the kind of legacy which you'd like to entrust to future Senior Emergency Services Coordinators. Please trust me when I say that your TEPCO counterparts in Fukushima anguish over taking their numerous mistakes with them to their graves.
I will leave you with 2 very powerful videos (in English and Japanese) of testimony to both the Japanese House of Parliament and the UN. These clips are of Mayor Idogawa, Mayor of Futaba-a town in Fukushima, heavily affected by radioactive contamination as I write this. Please listen to his appeals to the world regarding the negligence and complicity of the Japanese government vis a vis the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Mayor Idogawa speaks to Japanese Prime Minister Noda and Parliament at 7:22:
http: //WWW..voutube.com/watch?,.=VIBX oCbi4o Mayor Idogawa addresses the UN:
http: //,
/w .youtube.com/watch?v=ItrvagW4rllk I thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to read my letter, Mr. Amabile.
Best Regards, Cathy Iwane-concerned mother &evacuee of Japan 744 South Cedros Avenue Solana Beach, CA 92075 4