January, 28 2013, 03:05pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Kendra Ulrich, (202) 222-0715
Bill Walker, (510) 759-9911
No Way Out: Freeway Gridlock Could Stall Evacuation From San Onofre
A year after leak, online tool shows your distance -- and risk -- from accident at crippled reactor
WASHINGTON
One year ago, a leak of radiation caused an emergency shutdown of a reactor at the San Onofre nuclear plant -- a crisis that led to the discovery of unprecedented damage to critical equipment and has kept the plant closed ever since. But Southern California Edison wants to experimentally restart one of the crippled reactors.
If this experiment fails the result could be a massive release of radiation and the evacuation of millions of Southern Californians. Would you need to evacuate? Where would you go?
Now, a new interactive online mapping tool from Friends of the Earth shows Southern Californians just how far they are from Southern California Edison's crippled reactors. If you're in the official 10-mile evacuation zone, the site shows you where you're supposed to go for safety. Or you may find that like 8.5 million others, you're within the 50-mile zone the U.S. government advised Americans in Japan to evacuate from after the Fukushima disaster in 2011.
The mapping site complements a new social media campaign from Friends of the Earth, featuring an online ad that raises the question of freeway gridlock if people near the plant were ordered to evacuate.
Last year, a Friends of the Earth poll of residents within the Edison service area found that more than 50 percent did not know whether they were in the evacuation zone for a serious accident at San Onofre. Almost three-fourths of those surveyed said they were concerned about another accident.
"On the anniversary of the radiation leak -- which independent nuclear engineers and NRC technical staff have said could have been much worse -- it's important for Southern Californians to stop and think about what they would do if the NRC allows an experimental restart of a severely damaged reactor and as a result there's a more serious accident," said Kendra Ulrich, nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth. "There's only one sure way to ensure the safety of the public -- keep the crippled San Onofre reactors shut down."
Friends of the Earth fights for a more healthy and just world. Together we speak truth to power and expose those who endanger the health of people and the planet for corporate profit. We organize to build long-term political power and campaign to change the rules of our economic and political systems that create injustice and destroy nature.
(202) 783-7400LATEST NEWS
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The House voted 219-199 for Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act (FANFSA), which won support from 96 Democrats and 123 Republicans, including the lead sponsor, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio). Named for the constitutional amendment that protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, H.R. 4639 would close what campaigners call the data broker loophole.
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Wednesday's vote followed the House sending the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act to the Senate. H.R. 7888 would reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows for warrantless spying on noncitizens abroad but also sweeps up Americans' data.
The House notably included an amendment forcing a wide range of individuals and businesses to cooperate with government spying operations but rejected an amendment that would have added a warrant requirement to the bill, which the Senate could vote on as soon as Thursday.
Noting those decisions on the FISA reauthorization legislation, Ruddock stressed that "today's vote is a victory but follows a recent loss and ongoing threat as that Section 702 bill moves to the Senate this week too."
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Jeramie Scott, senior counsel and director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Project on Surveillance Oversight, also praised the House's FANFSA passage on Wednesday.
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Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at ACLU, similarly said Wednesday that "the bipartisan passage of this bill is a flashing warning sign to the government that if it wants our data, it must get a warrant."
Hamadanchy added that "we hope this vote puts a fire under the Senate to protect their constituents and rein in the government's warrantless surveillance of Americans, once and for all."
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While claiming that President Joe Biden backs "Palestinian aspirations for statehood," one of the cables asserts that "it remains the U.S. view that the most expeditious path toward a political horizon for the Palestinian people is in the context of a normalization agreement between Israel and its neighbors."
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As The Intercept's Ken Klippenstein and Daniel Boguslaw noted:
Since 2011, the U.N. Security Council has rejected the Palestinian Authority's request for full member status. On April 2, the Palestinian Observer Mission to the U.N. requested that the council once again take up consideration of its membership application. According to the first State Department cable, U.N. meetings since the beginning of April suggest that Algeria, China, Guyana, Mozambique, Russia, Slovenia, Sierra Leone, and Malta support granting Palestine full membership to the U.N. It also says that France, Japan, and Korea are undecided, while the United Kingdom will likely abstain from a vote.
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Belgium—which is seeking economic sanctions against Israel in response to its genocidal war on Gaza—is expected to join Spain's push for Palestinian statehood after the country's European Union presidency expires in June.
Currently, 139 of the U.N.'s 193 member states recognize Palestine as an independent state.
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PI calls it an "illicit network undermining democracy around the world."
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Yanis Varoufakis, a PI member and secretary-general of the left-wing Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, called the database "a treasure chest of well-researched reports on how the reactionaries of the world unite."
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