I received the following email last night from an area toxicologist who has been involved with efforts to shut down the San Onofre nuclear plant for some time and have no reason to doubt the facts of Mr. Johnson’s letter.
To: Mike Nichols; Lesa Heebner; David Ott; Dave Roberts; Tom
Campbell; Joe Kellejian
Subject: Radiation found in Downtown San Clemente Yesterday
Importance: High
Dear City Council Members and City Manager Ott,
Residents of San Clemente flew two citizens of Miyagi Prefecture near Fukushima Japan, to San Clemente this past Saturday for a public presentation to warn Californians about the horrors of nuclear power plant disasters.
The Japanese guests took their Geiger counters down to the crowded public beach in downtown San Clemente and found levels of radioactivity in the sand equal to those found on the beach in Miyagi Prefecture (near Fukushima) where children are developing tumors and cancer. This was yesterday here in Southern California! They also tested the inside of a home they were staying at in San Clemente and found radiation levels equal to those in their own homes in Miyagi Prefecture Japan!
The owners of the power plant, SCE and SDG&E operate the only radiation monitors within 50 miles of the power plant but do not share their radiation readings with the public on a real-time basis. They must have known about these levels but have said nothing.
It is unclear if this radiation is due to the “minor leaks” that SCE admitted to a week ago, or from the 40 years of constant venting of radioactive material that the NRC has allowed San Onofre to quietly do on a regular basis, or from the radioactive fallout from Fukushima one year ago. Either way this news is alarming as Solana Beach is only 30 miles from San Onofre via the north westerly winds
that blow on a regular basis.
Stunned by the finding,
Torgen Johnson
Solana Beach
Joe,
Thank you for taking the time to leave your comment. I hope that other readers take a few minutes to read your bio as I just have by clicking on your name.
From your Navy-military days, you are uniquely well-informed about the hazards of radioactive materials and I appreciate your explanation and information. What is possibly more impactful is your genuine concern for others as evidenced by the trajectory of your life.
Industry pundits and even our local news people do not see a problem with San Onofre. Earlier today I put together a list of equipment and materials to be able to objectively and definitively check the atmosphere, sands, and water for anomalous radiation readings. I think we may have to make a proposal on kickstarter as professional instrumentation is not inexpensive.
It is imperative that people be warned about the higher cancer rate for people who live in proximity to Nuclear Reactor Plants and Nuclear Sites. The danger is not from radiation fields near the plant. It is from Particulate that is released by the plant. Small microscopic particles that are radioactive that are entrained in steam releases or just blown in the wind from the surface of fuel rods for the reactor. No matter how clean they say they are, that stuff escapes all of the time. After Fukushima we detected microscopic particulate of Plutonium on the West Coast of the US. Plutonium has an average half life of 24,000 years. So if you had a small speck that had 48,000 atoms of Plutonium in it, one atom would decay every year for the next 24,000 years. Impossible to detect with a Geiger counter since background radiation is so high in the US (Twice that of Australia). Yet, if that microscopic speck were inside your lungs it could start numerous cancers throughout your body. Alpha radiation that it gives off is fifty times more damaging than x-rays.