San Onofre Nuclear Waste Accident Near Miss

[Tony Koretz]

San Onofre Nuclear Waste Accident Near Miss

A worker from the San Onofre nuclear power plant, David Fritch, put his job on the line and became the latest whistleblower from the plant to expose safety issues. At a public meeting on 9 August 2018 in Oceanside California, news of the near miss San Onofre nuclear waste accident sparked outrage and exposed systemic problems.

“I may not have a job tomorrow for what I’m about to say, but that’s fine, because I made a promise to my daughter that if no one else talked about what happened on Friday, that I would.”
While working at the plant in his capacity as a safety professional, Fritch observed first hand a near catastrophe. On 3 August 2018, a 100-ton canister filled with highly radioactive nuclear waste was being “downloaded” into a temporary transport carrier to be moved a few hundred yards from inside the plant to a storage silo buried near the world-famous San Onofre beach. As the thin-walled canister was being lowered into the transport cask, it snagged on a guide ledge four feet from the top. Crane operators were unaware that the canister had stopped descending and the rigging went completely slack, leaving the full weight of the heavy canister perched on that ledge by about a quarter-inch.

Had the ledge not held for the hour or more it took workers to realize and address the error, the thin-walled canister of highly toxic nuclear waste would have fallen 18 feet to the ground below.

A Quarter Inch from Chernobyl
Each canister contains roughly the same amount of radiation as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster released in 1986 that left a region of Ukraine uninhabitable, which has led some observers to call this recent incident at San Onofre: “A Quarter Inch from Chernobyl.”

“What we have is a canister that could have fallen 18 feet. That’s a bad day…. And you haven’t heard about it. And that’s not right.”
Mr. Fritch went on to note that the process of moving the toxic fuel from its current cooling pools to the dry storage silos buried near the beach is seriously flawed because the staff is “undermanned,” “undertrained.”

“And a lot of them, who haven’t been around nuclear before, are performing these tasks — not technicians, not highly trained, and not with thorough briefs.”
Fritch, an experienced safety professional, warned that the culture within the gates of the plant is not focussed on safety above all else, and he advised that the companies responsible should define success primarily in terms of safety, develop transparency, and commit sufficient financial resources to do the job safely.

The dramatic 4-minute video footage of Mr. Fritch’s comments is posted here:

READ MORE https://danapointer.com/san-onofre-nuclear-waste-accident-near-miss/

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