“The difficulty with nuclear power is that it produces the worst industrial waste that’s ever been produced by any industry on earth. This stuff remains deadly for literally, millions of years!” - Gordon Edwards, President, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
“Your project is a remarkable example of cinema that seeks to raise awareness and drive meaningful change.” - Organizing Committee of the Festival Internacional de Cine Animal y Ambiental (FICAA).
Every phase of the nuclear chain - from uranium mining, uranium milling, uranium enrichment, fuel fabrication, nuclear reactor fuel fissioning, irradiated fuel storage and reprocessing, through all phases of weapons production, leaves its own intense contribution to a rapidly accumulating legacy of radioactive waste that will remain lethal to all living things for longer than human civilization has yet existed.
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Irradiated nuclear fuel used in nuclear reactors is millions of times more radioactive than before use. Some radionuclides produced are deadly for millions, even billions of years!
There are hundreds of different radioisotopes produced in nuclear reactors that were never on the planet before humans first split the uranium atom.
The familiar internationally recognized distress signal ‘S.O.S. – based on the Morse code sequence of three dots and three dashes – seems vitally appropriate for what we have dubbed ‘the San Onofre Syndrome’, the tons of high-level radioactive waste being stored in unsafe short-term containers across the nation.
That is the long-lived poisonous ‘legacy’ referred to in the title of our recently released EON documentary, SOS, The San Onofre Syndrome: Nuclear Power’s Legacy. The film portrays San Onofre as a microcosm of a global problem - the mismanagement of lethal radioactive waste.
There are 54 operating commercial nuclear power stations with 94 nuclear power reactors in 28 states. Including already decommissioned reactors expands the number of these de facto nuclear dump sites. In October 2024 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission stated it licensed and oversees 79 nuclear waste sites in 39 states. This was in a slide presentation to woo Wyoming decision-makers into becoming a national “interim” nuclear waste site. Many caution that interim may turn into permanent without its having been designed for being permanent. Wyoming would lose certain rights over water decisions and other land regulations and could be devastated environmentally and economically by this proposal to absorb the nation’s high level radioactive waste.
Currently there is no national deep geological radioactive waste repository anticipated in the near future, so the tons of waste in the form of highly irradiated used nuclear fuel rods from nuclear power reactors is stranded on all those 79 sites for an indefinite time into the future. The government and industry are pushing therefore, to build "Consolidated Interim Storage” sites. Wyoming is one such potential CIS since Texas and New Mexico have legally declared they don't want nuclear dump sites in their states despite being targeted by the industry and licensed by the NRC. (Industry’s legal challenges to Texas and New Mexico’s legal right to object based on a rule of law is now in the Supreme Court to be heard in 2025.)
Many caution Wyoming and other potential CIS sites that ‘interim” may turn into “permanent” without its having been designed for being permanent. According to Federal regulations asserted by the NRC, Wyoming would lose certain rights legally over water decisions and other land regulations and might be devastated environmentally and economically through risk to its ranching and tourism industry by this proposal to absorb the nation’s high level radioactive waste.
Waste by Any Other Name…By the way, high level waste is being re-named in HR 9786, a bill authored by Mike Levin (D) Orange County, where San Onofre sits alongside the sea. This renaming of what is now termed high level spent fuel waste, would allow for the reprocessing of this waste, a process that actually creates more waste that’s even more hideously hard to deal with than ‘ordinary’ high level waste and encourages weapons proliferation.
HR 9786 also allows for the transport of hundreds of thousands of shipments of this hazardous waste across the country to wherever a CIS would be established. This would present huge transportation risks of contamination along the routes, pose enormous stress on our already failing infrastructure; highways, bridges, train tracks and would contaminate yet another site. The original sites will never be able to be completely cleaned of radioactivity and radioactive particles.
The Power of Informed DissentThis is the complex ‘syndrome’ our documentary dramatizes through the empowering stories of 5 San Onofre area residents who became citizen experts. We follow them for 10 years as their research uncovers the truth about the nuclear dump in their midst.
They stress the urgency of the situation pointing out that the tons of San Onofre’s high level waste is now in 5/8ths inch thin, gouged stainless steel canisters in concrete silos 108 feet from the rapidly rising ocean. Bluffs just north and south of the site have had landslides and recently crumbled. King tides and storm surges are seriously close to the canisters. Yet they also point to what they see as the current best technology to use and highest ethical choices to be taken. And soon!
Cinema as Counter NarrativeOur intention in producing this film has been – as the FICAA Committee so aptly puts it in awarding SOS the winner in its Environmental Documentary Feature category - “to raise awareness and drive meaningful change.”
Common Dreams reports that a public-private campaign by government and industry has mounted “a coordinated global effort to promote nuclear as a solution to climate change, despite ongoing concerns about radioactive waste, environmental risks, and the diversion of resources from renewable energy.”
World Nuclear News reports that a total of 31 countries so far have now signed on to an international declaration in support of tripling global nuclear energy capacity by 2050.
Rep. Mike Levin asserts that he has full support from the California legislators for his HR 9786. If so, they need to be educated about the precarious situation at San Onofre and the risks of transport.
Another state bill is being developed that would direct the state of California to make a plan to deal with the short term, urgent needs to store the waste at San Onofre technologically and ethically in a way that will ensure survival of California and its economy, said to be the 5th or 6th largest in the world.
Ecological OptionsWe’re grateful that we now have a film to contribute to this historic discussion. It speaks of the urgent need for a dry handling facility to repackage and repair canisters, thick casks that meet American Manufacturing Standards, stored as close as safely possible to the site of generation and placed in reinforced, monitored buildings that are overseen by trained workers.
We’re pleased to report that SOS, by filmmakers Mary Beth Brangan, Morgan Peterson and James Heddle, is making its way in California, nationally and internationally despite moving against this billion-dollar propaganda onslaught by pro-nuclear forces.
We’ve had screenings in Rio De Janeiro, Cape town, South Africa, Cape Cod, Albuquerque, Bolinas and Boston, among others. Dec. 13, the Mexican Film Festival gave us a major award. This makes 5 major awards won so far!
There's a screening Jan. 15 in Oceanside, CA at the Surf Museum. San Onofre is adjacent to a surfing area that’s internationally known.
This January 29th. we'll be having another screening of SOS in Laguna Beach, CA.
We'll be having another one in San Rafael, CA Jan. 22. Plus there are others scheduled in Spain.
So far in Feb., we'll be speaking after a screening at the Univ. of Oregon Feb. 5. and a screening is scheduled for Osaka University Feb. 6. We have more screenings in the works for the rest of 2025.
Please visit our website SanOnofreSyndrome.com for more information and watch our film! It can now be streamed on many platforms.
We're also on Amazon's Prime Video. In fact, if you wouldn't mind giving a review for SOS on that platform, it would greatly help to get the algorithms to boost it.
Solstice Blessings! May you all refresh yourselves in this darkness for this swing into more light and the next cycle!
With gratitude,
Mary Beth and Jim
Mary Beth Brangan and James Heddle co-direct EON, the Ecological Options Network. The multi-award winning EON feature documentary SOS – The San Onofre Syndrome: Nuclear Power’s Legacy, was chosen as the opening film in the 13th annual Global Nonviolent Film Festival, where it also received the Organizers’ Award for ‘BEST ACTUALITY SUBJECT – Feature Documentary’. SOS has won awards in several other international festivals, and is available for viewing worldwide. The film was produced by Mary Beth Brangan and directed by Brangan, Heddle, and Morgan Peterson, who also served as editor. SOS is a transgenerational family co-creation of two senior filmmakers and a millennial mom with two young daughters. For information, please visit the SOS website.
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