PLEASE SHARE THIS IMPORTANT INFORMATION WITH YOUR FAMILIES, FRIENDS, CO-WORKERS AND MEMBERSHIPS.

Your presence could end the fear of a nuclear nightmare at the San Onofre Nuclear Station. The draft Environmental Impact Report addressing steam generator replacement at San Onofre ignores the fact that this nuclear facility will operate for an addition 10-30 years if these expensive generators are replaced; adding the following risks:

1) Additional years of operation means an additional 10-30 years of risk of a catastrophic radioactive release due to accident, earthquakes, tsunamis, and/or acts of malice or terrorism.

2) It also means an additional 10-30 years of radioactive waste production and storage, sitting precariously on California's earthquake active and vulerable coast.

3) The project is opposed by SDG&E because the utility does not believe it is in the best interest of its ratepayers. This could leave Edison customers paying SDG&E's share of costs or SDG&E customers paying for un-wanted costly new steam generators and other costly replacements.

4) Edison must cut a 28 by 28 foot hole in each reactor to replace the steam generators. This would leave the southern coast of California extremely vulnerable during the replacement process.

5) Losses of property due to a radioactive release, whether homes or businesses, are excluded under all insurance policies.

6) The alternative of using non-nuclear replacement sources of energy would create new jobs, new property taxes, a cessation of nuclear waste production and new clean industries for our state. California could be the leader of conservation and renewable energy resources, as it is in stem cell research.

7) State governments have the right and the responsibility to deny project on grounds of economic viability. In California the Humboldt and Rancho Seco nuclear plants were shut down years ago.

If an accident resulted during the additional 10-30 years of operation from this proposed project, the 7th largest economy in the world would be devastated. For example the World Health Organization's 2002 study of Chernobyl states: two thousand cases of thyroid cancer have been diagnosed among young people exposed to radioactive iodine in April and May 1986; conservative estimates state that this figure is expected to rise to 8-10,000 over the coming years; a Ukrainian national report estimates that 15 years after the Chernobyl Catastrophe, the Soviet Union spent between 1986-1991 $18 billion on Chernobyl restoration; restrictions on land-use were implemented and many remain in effect today; several hundred thousand people were resettled; at present between 150,000 and 200,000 people permanently reside in so-called highly contaminated territories; Ukrainian figures estimate the number of people designated as permanently disabled by the Chernobyl accident (and their children) increased from 200 in 1991 to 64, 500 in 1997 and 91,219 in 2001; the Republic of Belarus estimates that losses over 30 years following the accident will amount to $235 billion; and the Ukrainian government estimates the loss as $148 billion over the period from 1986 to 2000.

8) Nuclear power is subsidized from mining, enriching, transport, insurance (mostly benefiting utilities), and eventual disposal. It is the only industry in the world incapable of finding insurance coverage.

9) The National Academy of Scientists has recently released a study regarding the vulnerability of nuclear plants and onsite storage of high-level radioactive waste. The conclusions are that nuclear plants are not adequately protecting radioactive waste, that Yucca Mountain is not and will never be a safe place to store radioactive materials, and that the dangers of transport make it imperative that nuclear materials be stored and safeguarded at reactor sites.

10) Finally the nuclear workforce is an aging workforce and one that does not attract highly qualified new employees. The number of students majoring in nuclear engineering in college is dramatically less than a few decades ago. As these plants continue to age, will we be able to depend on the technical knowledge of workers to operate and maintain these plants for decades into the future?

California has waited over a quarter of a century for a solution to the problems presented by lethal radioactive waste storage on our coast. We must not continue with the charade that this deadly material is going "somewhere else". We must, we can, stop the further production of this radioactive material.

Nuclear power is an experiment whose time has come to an end. We will not continue to prosper as a state if we do not begin to close down our aging nuclear plants and replace them with alternative methods of power generation.

Please take the time to let the California Public Utilities Commission know that continued operation of a nuclear plant, which daily produces high-level radioactive waste, is not in the best interest of ratepayers.

The San Onofre steam generator replacement project will one of the topics discussed on the California Report tomorrow.