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SLUGGO WASSERMAN: The prime mover of today’s show is an outrageous column that appeared in the LA Times attacking Jane Fonda’s magnificent op-ed questioning the move to re-open the atomic reactor at Three Mile Island.
Jane Fonda has turned out to be one of the world's great activists. She’s a wonderful human being, two-time Oscar winner, everybody in LA knows who Jane Fonda is.
She’s written one of the best op eds I’ve read on nuclear power. It has appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer. It’s about 3 Mile Island, which they want to reopen.
Somebody in the American utility industry ate the brown acid at Woodstock and they keep coming up with these insane ideas.
I went to Three Mile Island in January of 1980 and interviewed people who were dying from radiation which the industry still denies.
https://ratical.org/radiation/KillingOurOwn/
So today we’ll discuss this op-ed by Jane Fonda and the absurdity of having a columnist from the Los Angeles Times who puts it down and absolutely does not understand the realities of nuclear power, especially the two reactors at Diablo Canyon that threaten all of us.
Here in Los Angeles the LA Times has been reasonably, shall we say skeptical, of what's happening at Diablo Canyon. The number one threat to our continued existence in Los Angeles is the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant the two reactors at Avila Beach, 9 miles West of San Luis Obispo, on the Pacific Ocean. Unit 1 was supposed to be shutting now .
Between 2016 and 2018, California’s best and brightest, under the governorship of Jerry Brown, got together. There were hundreds of people, dozens of meetings and hearings. Everybody involved had knowledge about energy in the state of California. They devised a landmark plan to phase out the reactors, which are now more than 40 years old.
The Governor, the Lieutenant-Governor…whose name was Gavin Newsom (still is)… but now he's the governor… and many of the leaders of the labor unions, environmental groups, the assembly, the Senate, the utility regulators the other state regulatory agencies, the local governments…all got together and then, with a two year process, reached consensus on this magnificent phase out plan to take care of the workers, take care of the local governments, deal with the environment…and deal with the ongoing power supply of what would happen in California when Diablo Canyon would shut.
They came to the conclusion that the perfect shutdown time would be now… 2024 for unit 1, and 2025 for unit 2, and with that the backup power of the 1.8 million--- now two million--- rooftop solar units in the state of California, and battery technology, and wind power, geothermal etcetera, would cover the shortfall from Diablo Canyon and keep California without blackouts.It's impossible to overstate the power and importance of that deal. It was beautifully conceived. Consensus was reached. And right now we should be going to 100% renewables in the state… which we do from time to time…actually pretty much every day.
There's a time of almost every day where the state of California is powered 100% by renewable energy.
But in 2022, Gavin Newsom killed that deal. He forced the legislature to pass Senate bill 846, and to cancel the phase out of Diablo Canyon.
Then he gave PG&E…whose chief executive makes $17 million a year --- Patty Poppe by the way… actually in 2022 I believe she made $40 million when you account for the stock options she was given.So, because PG&E loses so much money at Diablo, Newsom got the legislature to given them a huge “forgivable” loan and has been sabotaging the state’s solar industry with abominable PUC rulings that are utterly destroying California’s rooftop installation industry.
Diablo is surrounded by earthquake faults, and God help us when the San Andreas goes off, threatening the entire city of Los Angeles, the County Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, you name it, with radioactive extinction.
Jane Fonda, as many of you know, made a wonderful film called “The China Syndrome back in 1978. It aired in March in 1979, in the middle of the meltdown at TMI,
I was on the set of the China Syndrome. Jane wrote me a letter because of what we were doing with the Clamshell Alliance. I still have the letter by the way and I'm waiting to give it back to her.
We also had a nuclear accident in Los Angeles back in the 50s, at Santa Susanna, and they're not even cleaning it up as Governor Newsom has let Boeing (of all people) off the hook,
The site is still horribly radioactive. There's a kids’ camp right downwind there…So Jane Fonda has authored this fantastic op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, prompted by the idea that they want to reopen 3 Mile Island Unit 1. Talk about the definition of insanity!
TIM JUDSON: It was opened first in 1974. They shut it because it doesn't pay and now they want to reopen it.
SLUGGO: But Sammy Roth attacked her in the pages of the LA Times for arguing against the reopening of TMI.
MYLA RESON: It was so infuriating to read that Sammy Roth piece because there was much disinformation that you have to take some CBD to get through it…It was just infuriating.
SLUGGO: Mr. Roth, you are invited to come on this show. I've e-mailed you God knows how many times. If you hear this, I'm at solartopia at ME dot com and you can call me. I've sent you my phone number. You were invited to be on this show today.
Tim Judson with the Nuclear Information & Resource Service is a real a bona fide expert on Three Mile Island Unit 1. Tim can you tell us on a scale of one to 10 how insane is it to try and reopen TMI Unit 1?
TIM: It's total madness on a bunch of different levels. The reason that Three Mile Island closed to begin with was that it was so uneconomical that that even the largest nuclear corporation in the country couldn't justify continuing to run it.
The state of Pennsylvania decided not to provide a subsidy or a bailout to try to even up the bottom line. So the idea that they're going to restart this reactor a few years later as solar and renewables are getting cheaper and cheaper just so they can sell power to Microsoft’s data center…it doesn't make any sense.
This reactor has been closed for five years. No one knows if it's safe to restart. It has some known serious safety problems that were neglected before it closed five years ago… which Jane Fonda has questioned.
SLUGGO: Microsoft says they wanna buy all the power …which makes it their own private nuke…but at public expense…with zero responsibility for radioactive waste management or melt-downs or environmental impacts or public health damage. A classic corporate scam.
TIM: Yeah, It's totally wild to think that one corporation could consume all the electricity from a nuclear power plant, Microsoft has so many large data centers that it is a huge power consumer right across the whole East Coast and Midwest region.They're pretending that this is going to be directly powering just Microsoft data centers ,
SLUGGO: If Microsoft is buying all the power you got to wonder why they want it.
TIM: The bottom line is they're getting the public to pay. They’re getting federal loans to fire this reactor up, of which they will get all the power but the public will be stuck with the radioactive waste. Microsoft's not gonna deal with that.
SLUGGO: They're also stuck with the global warming. Jane mentioned this in her piece. 560° or thereabouts is the operating temperature of an atomic reactor. Anybody says they're operating any machine at 560°F to help us cool the planet needs to have their head examined.
MYLA: Jane Fonda also makes it clear that the CEO of Constellation Energy (which owns Three Mile Island) admitted that the deal was only possible because of federal subsidies. So it's once again socialism for the wealthy and crumbs…and radioactive waste… for the rest of us.
It's clear that we the public would be footing the bill and the rich would be lining their pockets.
SLUGGO: Same as Diablo Canyon, whose owner, Pacific Gas & Electric, has admitted that to keep Diablo open to 2030 is going to cost---get this---almost 12 billion dollars over market. We could get the same power in the next 5 years $12 billion cheaper than by continuing to operate Diablo.
All of us here in LA are expected to pay that even though we don't get any electricity at all from Diablo Canyon.
Tatanka you live near Diablo Canyon.
TATANKA BRICCA: I’m 15 miles away. It’s such a huge distraction while 20 million people are evacuating Florida, which is a result of global warming. It will be trillions of dollars and it's just the beginning.
They keep saying it's like the storm of the century…but no, it's the beginning of even worse. So it’s a collective state of denial.
Then at the same time you're reopening these nukes which is just idiocy. As Myla says, it's socialism for the rich. They saw nothing but red ink and still have no solution for the nuclear waste. So they're kicking the can down the road, raking it in, and leaving us and future generations with this incredible problem.
SLUGGO: Diablo Canyon had the model for de-commissioning. The phase-out was beautifully done. I think they wanted to destroy that vision.
Certainly Gavin Newsom, who signed that deal, has just shredded it. It’s outrageous. We have 94 operating reactors in this country . We need a plan to phase them out. And they came up with it in California thanks to Jerry Brown. And here it was in place.
Sammy Roth did not, in his piece attacking Jane’s op-ed, say that nuclear power contributes to global warming. 560° Fahrenheit is roughly the operating temperature inside a nuclear plant.
How in God's name does anybody with a straight face say that nuclear power helps fight global warming when they operate at 560°Fahrenheit?
And every nuclear reactor emits carbon 14 which is radioactive. And Tim, you well know that they all emit carbon when they produce their fuel.
TIM: There are some serious structural flaws which, again, Sammy Roth did not mention in his op-ed that would make it even more insane to consider reopening TMI. Some are also true at Diablo Canyon. Reactor core embrittlement, cracked pipes, all that stuff.
Remember this is an old reactor. It started operating 50 years ago, in 1974, and it had been on online a few years before Unit 2 came online and three months after it opened, melted down.
So this is an embrittled reactor vessel just like Diablo Canyon’s reactors. It also has a defective steam generator, a major safety component.
The high pressure super heated water from the reactor runs through these steam generators that create the steam that turns the turbine that generates electricity.
But these things are huge … 40 to 60 feet tall. They have thousands and thousands of these pipes running through them, running at a high pressure and lot of radioactivity.
When they replaced steam generators at TMI several years ago, they bought defective faulty steam generators that are subject to accelerated deterioration.
The community was extremely concerned about this. Now they're just devastated by the idea that after sitting and rusting for five years sitting idle they’re going to try to restart this reactor with these defective steam generators.
Classically, the steam generator tube rupture is one of the highest probability paths to a nuclear meltdown at this type of reactor.
SLUGGO: After Unit 2 had this major accident in which of course the company denied there was any meltdown, denied anybody was harmed… both huge lies…there was a referendum in central PA with a three to one margin against re-opening Unit One and the company and the government just told the public to “forget about it, we're gonna open it anyway.”
TIM: So yes, this is a community that's been traumatized by the continued operation of this reactor after being traumatized by the disaster. There's still people dying of cancer in the community from the accident 45 years ago absolutely
SLUGGO: On our Monday zoom we had Joe Mangano, the great researcher, who showed definitively what we saw initially… that people did die at Three Mile Island, and they continue to die at Three Mile Island.
MYLA: Helen Caldicott also points out that cancer is not the only health problem that is caused by radiation. Exposure to ionizing radiation weakens the immune system. It’s linked to all kinds of health problems, including cardiovascular problems. Children and women are particularly vulnerable, especially pregnant women, with higher rates of miscarriages and birth defects, as we see across reactor communities around the world.
SLUGGO: We've seen it around Diablo Canyon as well. And God help us if the San Andreas or one of the dozen earthquake faults identified at Diablo Canyon goes off. We are directly downwind here in LA.
TIM: One thing really sad about Sammy Roth's commentary is that it repeats and plays into this radiation denial.
For decades the fossil fuel industry engaged in fake science and bought off researchers to deny climate change.
The nuclear industry has been engaged in radiation denial for its entire existence. Because if they actually acknowledged how dangerous radiation is… and that these nuclear power plants are just huge radiation factories that are constantly releasing radiation…and that the whole game in running a nuclear power plant is to keep it from catastrophically releasing a significant portion of the radiation that they're producing inside them… then they couldn't get away it.
SLUGGO: They’re forcing us to pay for it. They’re not just in dollar denial, they're also in heat denial. You see these ridiculous articles that matter of factly say nukes are “zero emission” which is a horrible lie…and that they are “carbon-free”…also a horrible lie.
They never mention that these reactors operate at 560° Fahrenheit or thereabouts, and they heat all the water that they take up and the atmosphere with steam…and that they are a significant cause of global warming.
And now we're seeing these horrible hurricanes and here we are with the major paper in the LA County running a completely fraudulent attack on Jane Fonda’s brilliant editorial.
And Sammy Roth, we have been repeatedly inviting you and you’re welcome on the show anytime. I don't like to be attacking someone's work who's not here. The door is open.
TATANKA: I think we need to remind people that the only reason nuclear energy exists…its primary purpose at the very beginning… has been to create fissile material for nuclear weapons.
As Myla mentioned, enormous amounts of water to cool the high core temperatures raise the ocean temperature. Reactors need to be located close to a water source river or the ocean.
Most certainly within the lifetimes if not our children, definitely our grandchildren, they will be overwhelmed. It will be a planet full of Three Mile Islands and Fukushima, whether they're located in California or Japan or Ukraine… nuclear power plants can very easily become nuclear weapons.SLUGGO: We have two nuclear power sites in war zones now, one in Ukraine and one in Russia. It’s absolutely terrifying.
MYLA: In his LATimes piece attacking Jane Fonda’s op ed, Sammy Roth argued that on land, wind turbines kill birds and offshore they harm marine life but we know that hot water emissions at Diablo Canyon are out of compliance with the federal Clean Water Act, and that the mechanism used to draw ocean water into the Diablo cooling system destroys billions of embryonic sea creatures.
But somehow Diablo has gotten a pass and they can discharge hot water into the ocean by Avila Beach. This has had a devastating effect on the marine environment. Down at San Onofre, Southern California Edison was devastating the marine environment with their discharge of super heated water.
SLUGGO: When somebody complains about the bird kill at windmills, we respond that no solar panel and no windmill ever killed a fish.
TIM: At a recent UN Conference, a Department of Energy person was asked whether it was responsible to continue operating and promoting the construction of more nuclear power plants when they consume so much water, especially in places like the western US where where there are real problems with water scarcity for drinking water.
He made this outrageous reply, which contradicts every bit of environmental science that I know of, saying that the once-through cooling systems that Diablo and most other nuclear power plants in the country use are better for the environment and you can tell because the fishermen are catching more fish.
But the cooling system sucks about 2 billion gallons of water a day and everything with it, so the fish larvae, and actual fish, and other organisms, get ground up in the cooling system. Then it jettisons the Super heated water back out into the Bay.
And that kind of thermal pollution actually reduces the oxygen content in the water, so the fish are not only getting thermal shock from from the temperature gradient in the water, there's also less oxygen for them.
TATANKA: The bailouts of these big infrastructure big energy infrastructure projects are totally last century. They’re inefficient, they're dangerous, they're costly, they're unhealthy. The energy of the future is not big infrastructure. This is like going backwards.
TIM: Renewable energy is the cheapest source of power on the planet. Solar and wind especially are cheaper than fossil fuels. They’re cheaper than nuclear by a football field.
But we're in this transition period right now. The whole energy system’s in flux. We've climate change going on. Renewables are coming on fast. But the existing industry with nuclear power and fossil fuel power plants doesn't want to give up their profits.
So we’ve had this charade going for the last decade of nuclear power companies claiming that they've got it so hard that you've got all this subsidized wind and solar… and what about our poor nuclear plants?
But they’ve had a leg up for 70 years in the US. They’ve gotten bailouts in several states in the northeast including New York, where I live, which is really sad.
And there's a national nuclear bailout now through the Inflation Reduction Act. In New York, in 2016, the governor started pushing this bailout for our four reactors to $7.5 billion, they justified it by saying we need to keep these nukes online as a bridge to our renewable energy future.
Because we're not building renewables fast enough. We're going to get there by 2030. But we just got to keep these old nukes.
So here we are several years later New York is totally behind on building renewables. The kicker is we spent $520 million subsidizing old nuclear power plants last year and we only spent $50 million on renewable energy.
TATANKA: It’s ridiculous. Saying propping up old reactors to get us to our renewable energy future is like saying if you're obese, the bridge to being slim is to go out and eat a hell of a lot more food.
TIM: Exactly. And now Constellation says that the local grid operator PJM, the largest grid in the country, has to allow Three Mile Island an exemption to get to the front of what they call the interconnection queue. That’s the list of all the power plants and other energy projects that need to connect to the grid in order to get built and come online.
So for this Microsoft deal and this great TMI restart, Constellation wants an exemption to get to the front of the PJM interconnection.
Guess what! There’s 200 gigawatts---200,000 megawatts---of renewable energy and energy storage projects that are languishing because PJM is so slow to document.
So 100 hundreds of times more power than Three Mile Island could produce is in the interconnection, waiting to go.
SLUGGO: They did that in Ohio, where they killed the wind industry. And here in California, we now go 100% renewable for part of every day, while Diablo hogs the grid with filthy, expensive power.
California now has the second highest electric bills in the country only because of Diablo Canyon. When the industry talks about nuclear they completely ignore the cost.
Nuclear is now 5 to 10 times more expensive than solar. Here in California we've got two million rooftop solar installations. I'm waiting to do mine.
We had an industry with 70,000 workers installing rooftop solar. Then the governor swoops in and says no, we gotta keep the nuclear plant. There are 1500 jobs at Diablo Canyon. We had 70,000 installing cheaper, cleaner, safer, more reliable panels on rooftops. So what’s really going on here?
We want Los Angeles 100% solar powered with rooftop solar and other renewables, with batteries for backup. We can green-power the vehicles in LA county with rooftop solar installed on existing structures including parking lots, stadiums, the aqueducts, etcetera.
We want the 2028 Olympics 100% powered by renewables. There’s absolutely no reason we can't do it. Brisbane will do it in 2032. But LA can be the first.
Subsidizing Diablo through 2030 would cost $12 billion or more. They want us to pay for it. That’s inexcusable.
TIM: This TMI deal has Microsoft paying ten cents a kilowatt hour for that electricity after the federal subsidies. It’s a mystery to me why Microsoft would pay twice the price that you can get power, and this in the market where they’re going to buy it from TMI for 20 years. Why is Constellation doing it? They’ve got thousands of megawatts of nuclear plants that they should be happy to sell Microsoft… power at a cheaper rate than ten cents a kilowatt-hour.
SLUGGO: This TMI restart is a scam like small reactors are a scam. I think we have not seen the bottom of any of this. I hope when we do, the LATimes will cover it.
Sammy Roth… I want to again invite you to join us anytime you want. We will be gentle.
I do want to say at the end of your article there's a very good sentence. Thank you for this one. It says we should don “climate colored goggles”--- I like that… CLIMATE-COLORED GOGGLES ---before doing a head long leap into AI.
We should also acknowledge that AI and crypto are today’s number one energy scams, along with these silly mythological reactors.
And that TMI needs to stay shut, while Diablo Canyon needs to get shut, and the whole world should adopt this great plan we worked out in 2018. Gavin Newsom, you signed it!
TIM: And by the way….It’s working. The transition to solar is happening everywhere, whether the industry wants it or not.
Even with the record heat in California this summer, you're not having the same grid problems that you were having two years ago, because of all the solar and storage that's come online the last two years in part to replace Diablo.
SLUGGO: And whether they wanted to or not, the transition plan has its own momentum. We are avoiding blackouts in California for one reason: we have backup batteries and they've exceeded expectations.
I do not believe that they're gonna reopen Three Mile Island. I do believe we're going to shut Diablo Canyon sooner rather than later.
Thank you Jane Fonda for your great op-ed…and for continuing to support Greenpeace.
Let’s solarize Los Angeles. We do not want to be embarrassed in the 2028 Olympics by still burning any fossil or nuclear fuels.
We’ll see you all next week at California Solartopia…No Nukes!...and let's make this place 100% solar NOW!!
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“California Solartopia” airs most Wednesdays, 5-6pm PT, at KPFK/Pacifica 90.7 fm, and via KPFK.org, hosted by Myla Reson, Tatanka Bricca and Harvey “Sluggo” Wasserman.