Just letting everybody know radiation from Japan's meltdown is not a San Diego problem...

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Federal and state officials say testing indicates radioactivity spewing from Japan's crippled nuclear reactors presents no health threats along the West Coast. A radioactive plume that reached Southern California Friday dissipated so much it posed no health risk to residents., authorities said.

Health and radiation experts say any radioactive materials that may have been carried the 5,500 miles across the ocean from Japan to the United States are highly diluted and harmless.

"Everything that you can get exposed to right now is much less than what you would get with a typical chest X-ray," said Dr. Richard Clark, director of the UCSD Division of Medical Toxicology.

Tracy EmblemTakes on Nukes: America Should Reconsider its Bail-out of the Nuclear Power Industry...

America Should Reconsider its Bail-out of the Nuclear Power Industry

No new nuclear power plants have been built in the United States since the late 1970's.

However, in 2009, Senator Lamar Alexander from Tennessee unveiled his blueprint to build 100 nuclear power plants within the next 20 years.  Even with the nuclear power plant crisis unfolding in Japan, the senator insists that nuclear energy is safe and continues to call on the federal government to guarantee loans for nuclear power plants with tax payer dollars.

According to the Institute for Southern Studies, the nuclear industry has spent at least $640 million lobbying during the last decade.

Although there are several deep budget cuts proposed for social and environmental programs, President Obama has budgeted another $36 billion dollars in loan guarantees even though the nuclear industry should be seeking private marketplace financing for new construction. This amounts to a bailout for the nuclear industry.

The federal guarantees were first authorized by Congress in 2005. The New York Times reports that "a one-sentence provision" was buried in the energy bill and inserted without debate at the urging of the nuclear power industry, making nuclear plants classified as clean energy and eligible for tens of billions of dollars in government loan guarantees.

Apparently the lessons learned from the 1986 Chernobyl power plant reactor meltdown that caused the worst nuclear accident in history were forgotten. In the United States in 1979, we almost had a partial meltdown at Three Mile Island but the reactor was brought under control just in time.

With the meltdown of nuclear reactors in Japan, our government leaders, charged with protecting the health and safety of our citizens, should carefully evaluate the risks of nuclear power plants.

No matter how the industry spins it, nuclear power is not safe and will never be until the waste problem is solved. Thirty years later, we have not solved the dilemma of storing nuclear waste or the problem of what to do with the weapons-grade plutonium. It only takes about 18 pounds of plutonium to build a nuclear weapon. 

In the United States, more than 60,000 metric tons of nuclear waste is stored in temporary storage facilities at 131 civilian and military sites around the country. The current storage solutions are only expected to last 100 years, while nuclear waste can remain lethal for 100,000 years or more.  The government has no long term plan to store the waste and insure the waste does not remain an environmental hazard.

We must also consider the weapons proliferation risk in an age of transnational terrorism in addition to the risk of an environmental accident. These are just some reasons why we must adopt alternative renewable energy standards and use renewable energy sources rather than build 100 more nuclear power plants.

In the United States, a conservative solution is to invest in clean energy sources that do not pose risks inherent in nuclear energy production and storage. These sources include creating bio-energy from plant matter or animal waste. For example, in Northern California, Pacific Gas and Electric Company and BioEnergy Solutions are building an innovative bio-gas project in Fresno County to deliver renewable natural gas derived from animal waste, reducing the carbon footprint at its source.

In San Diego, San Diego Gas and Electric Company has announced a partnership in a wind project on the Campo reservation using renewable energy. This month SDG&E also announced a 25-year contract to generate solar energy from a proposed 1,057-acre solar energy facility near El Centro which would create almost 300 construction jobs in a two-year period.

Rather than subsidizing nuclear power plants or off-shore drilling, an alternative approach is needed. Using concentrated solar energy we could power the entire United States annually.  The public already owns the right-away along the state and interstate highways. It does not take a lot of imagination to conceive of a solar-electric array 100 feet wide and 100 miles long, or any number of miles. Since the highways pass through cities that need electricity we would have connectivity where every American could see their tax dollars at work.

While those in favor of building nuclear power plants argue that nuclear energy is inexpensive, they have not factored in the costs and risks associated with the building and maintenance of storage facilities for the nuclear waste or the cost to our people's health and the environment if there is a problem with the nuclear reactors.  If they had to factor in the cost of insurance to pay for these risks, nuclear energy would not be inexpensive.

America should have vision. Consequently, the United States should consider phasing out its nuclear power plants over the next generation and begin investing in other safer renewable energy sources. We can lead the world in clean energy technology.

Two  more Tsunami-Earthquake related from KSWB - San Onofre nuke safety, family concerns

Japan's Earthquake Tsunami effects at San Diego headline tease...Film at whenever (below)...

The earthquake was the worst in Japan’s history and the 5th largest in the world’s recorded history. It is too early to take official counts, but a current estimate suggests hundreds are dead and as many as 88,000 are missing.  The fierce waves caused by this tsunami have caused two fires, swept away buildings, ships, cars and homes and flooded the eastern coast of Japan.

“We are fortunate that San Diego County did not have any serious problems, but the advisory is a reminder to residents that we could be impacted by a tsunami here, caused either by an earthquake in a remote location or on one of our local faults,” Ron Lane, director of the County Office of Emergency Services, said in a statement.

In San Diego, the earthquake -- the fifth most powerful on record since 1900 -- caused significant tide fluctuations and small swells of less than three feet. La Jolla beaches reported a 2.8-foot swell, San Diego Navy Pier 1.6 feet and northern Imperial Beach 2.6 feet.

Hawaii evacuated coastal areas after the earthquake in preparation for the tsunami waves. Hawaii’s Big Island issued a warning early Friday morning, and the waves reached the island around 3 a.m. local time, or 5 a.m. PST. The first waves are only about a foot higher than normal tsunami waves, however officials have warned people to not go near the coasts, as the effects of the tsunami could continue for a few hours.

Last week, Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post wrote an opinion piece on our country’s energy policy and where he thinks President Obama is trying to go with it.  He called it “Obama’s energy pipe dreams.”  The whole premise of the piece is to tell us that searching for alternative and renewable sources of energy is a waste of time—we’re dependent on oil, and we always will be dependent on oil.

What a forward thinking strategy!  After all, it’s not like oil is a finite resource or anything!  It’s not as if someday—albeit somewhere far in the future—we’ll have extracted the very last drop of petroleum from the Earth.  What happens if we haven’t ended our dependency on fossil fuels by then?  Will the world simply come to an end?

His argument, it seems, is that since a transition to clean energy “isn’t going to happen for many, many decades, if ever,” then why should we... (more)