EON Accomplishments: Report to Funders and Supporters 2018
Dear EON Friends,
Despite the scandals and atrocities du jour, our EON team continues to be focused on key existential issues that directly impact all planetary life - manmade ionizing radiation (nuclear) and manmade non-ionizing wireless radiofrequency/electromagnetic (RF/EMF) radiation and the election integrity necessary to deal with them. We’re increasing the flow of accurate information by documenting the political processes that decide how these toxins are managed. We’re taking action, testifying and officially commenting on government policy. We’re joining forces with wonderful, committed people on the local, state and national levels advocating sane, sustainable solutions and working to reduce risk.
Your on-going support is what allows us to continue to confront these key planetary crises.
Our Work in the Past Year
SHUTDOWN - The Case of San Onofre
Nuclear is the quintessential tyrannous, totalitarian technology, terminally inimical to democracy and to life itself. Fukushima is the future, if nuclear abolition is not soon achieved. At San Onofre and at Diablo Canyon, Californians are fighting to prevent two potential Fukushima’s from happening here. Our Shutdown documentary project is a part of that fight.
Eight years in the making, SHUTDOWN – The Case of San Onofre is now evolving as a feature-length documentary.
It's a dramatic, character and issue-driven story showing the power of informed citizen action dealing with the gripping national conundrum now confronting nuclear reactor communities across the country. What to do with the accumulated tons of lethal radioactive waste now stranded on reactor sites, as the nation’s fleet of aging nuclear reactors face a cascade of looming shutdowns?
Election Integrity
One year ago we videoed selected talks by our friends from a Conference on Election Integrity because for policies to change, we desperately need honest elections. Though the wireless radiation and nuclear issues have dominated our focus since then, we fervently hope you all vote in this critically important midterm November 6 election. And as you do, please be aware of and take whatever action you can against the myriad ploys to disenfranchise millions of voters (mainly the poor, young, old, African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans) as well as the easily hacked electronic voting machines and electronic voting tabulators.
Documenting & Helping to Catalyze the Resurgent Nuclear Free Movement
On Our popular EON YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWlZt-JtE1s
MB speaks at a Nuclear Regulatory Comm. hearing in Roswell, New Mexico - EON Photo
Our 2018 work has taken us down the California coast to Diablo Canyon and San Onofre, as well as to the deserts of New Mexico, and Texas, where nuclear waste entrepreneurs are pushing for nuclear waste from California’s reactors to be shipped. Residents around San Onofre have been told this is a great possibility to get rid of their lethal waste and that people in New Mexico and west Texas really want it.
In April, we traveled to New Mexico to document the passionate refusal by the New Mexican people to consent to receiving any more radioactive waste and we joined them in testifying at the official NRC scoping hearings. New Mexican residents already suffer from the first atomic bomb detonated there in Alamogordo and from massive amounts of pollution from weapons development and waste, including the WIPP site that contaminated nearby Carlsbad with plutonium. No compensation has ever been given to NM victims by the government, though it was given to ‘downwinders’ in other states.
Haste Makes Waste Even More Dangerous
Southern California Edison hired nuclear contractor Holtec to transfer its high level waste from the cooling pools into cement holes adjacent to the popular beach Trestles in San Clemente. Holtec’s contract stipulated that the process be completed by early 2019 or they would suffer severe cuts in payment.
In early August 2018, a thin walled canister filled with 49 tons of the San Onofre high-level radioactive waste that is being pushed by proposed federal bill HR 3053 to be transported to New Mexico, was nearly dropped 18 feet to concrete below. We’re documenting the whistleblower’s statements and quaking at the implications as this story continues to unfold. Fortunately, the utility operator, Southern California Edison, has halted (temporarily) the loading of the high level fuel from the cooling pool into the concrete on the beach where the near-miss occurred. The catastrophe could have rivaled Fukushima if the 5/8inch thin stainless steal canister holding the 49 tons would have ruptured. The engineering defect that caused the near miss, which had happened once before and hadn’t been fixed, may cause other problems by scratching or gouging the canister sides. This could speed up seaside corrosion leading to through-wall cracking of the thin containers that hold the intensely irradiated fuel. This fuel is what’s called ‘high burn up’ that is super thermally and radioactively hot. Higher heat speeds up the already short time it can take to corrode through 5/8 in. stainless steel (16 years.) The zirconium cladding enclosing the irradiated fuel combusts in the presence of oxygen so through-wall cracks that allow air into the canister could lead to a disastrous fire. A hot enough fire could spread to the 29 other canisters close by, each canister holding as much plutonium as the Nagasaki bomb. All this and more will be in our documentary Shutdown.
Climate change is causing rapid sea rise that will also affect the waste containers stored only 108 ft. from the edge of the ocean and only 31 inches above the current ground water level. The utility is in a hurry to remove this fuel from the cooling pool and load these canisters onto the beach. They then want to destroy the expensive cooling pool that is the only method of handling the waste to save money. The utility then can release their liability for the waste to the DOE. Our blog: We Almost Lost SoCal
We’re also facilitating information flow between the San Onofre activists and the Mothers for Peace who are also working on high level waste management at Diablo Canyon by sharing informative video clips.
Exposing California’s National Nuclear Bomb Shop
As we have done for the last several years, we have partnered with Tri-Valley CAREs and the Western States Legal Foundation to report on yearly non-violent rallies and demonstrations at Livermore Laboratory commemorating Hiroshima Day. This year we produced YouTube posts and cable programs covering the riveting talks at the event. These talks contain crucial information that is rarely heard yet avoiding planetary destruction hinges on people understanding it and taking action.
2 one-hour segments for cablecast at regional and national stations
7 individual speaker clips posted on-line at YouTube.com/EON3 and our blog: UN No Nukes Day
Catalyzing Push Back to Wireless 5G “Small Cells”
The trillion dollar wireless telecom industry wants to force cities and counties to allow installation of powerful microwave and millimeter wave emitting antennas (called ‘small cells’) along the public rights of way close to homes, schools, businesses, parks, day care centers, health facilities, etc. AT&T, Verizon, etc. want to use publicly owned streetlights and utility owned poles to install these 5G (fifth generation) antennas every 500 ft or so. If one carrier is allowed to install, all other carriers must be allowed, according to law. There are at least seven carriers in the Bay Area, for instance. Every pole could be loaded with bristling electronics; overloaded poles have already caused many fires throughout California.
The FCC is mandating rules that prevent oversight, appropriate fees and any health considerations by local government officials. Studies show people within a 1,500 ft. radius of cell towers are dramatically sickened. Thousands of peer reviewed studies are showing health and environmental damage from manmade wireless radiation. Densifying intense microwave radiation from wireless 3G & 4G antennas in spray patterns plus adding phased array directed millimeter beams to people holding devices along the streets and into close by homes, businesses, schools, etc., would be a public health and environmental disaster! Industry says it needs this for the internet of things and for providing HD TV and internet wirelessly to compete with Comcast.
We’ve been testifying at public meetings, organizing with others and sharing the clear scientific evidence of harm from wireless radiofrequency radiation (RF/EMF) and information not only about the problems with the 5G rollout, but also about the solution. Our blog: Why Fry the Planet? 5G as Existential Threat
MB describes documented health impacts of EMF to the Marin County Board of Supervisors
Jim advocates for a safer alternative to 5G, municipally owned optical fiber networks at a Fairfax City Council meeting. (Public video frame grabs.)
We’ve published an article on the situation and we’ve been quoted in both the Marin Independent Journal and the Pt. Reyes Light. We’ve helped to get the attention of the elected officials in Mill Valley, San Rafael, Fairfax and the Board of Supervisors. We’re involved with helping to organize an informational forum for Mayors, Supervisors and the public early next year on this issue. We catalyzed renewed interest in fiber optic to the premises as a superlative alternative to 5G wireless internet and TV. The in-depth white paper by Dr. Timothy Schoechle, PhD, “Re-Inventing Wires: The Future of Landlines and Networks”, is a useful public policy report on the Internet and the future of landlines and wireless networks, recently published online by the National Institute for Science, Law & Public Policy (NISLAPP) in Washington, D.C. (members of EON’s board.)
EON Media Year in Review
Our YouTube Channel now has 45 new video reports - from election protection to wireless radio-frequency pollution (we now have 720 videos on YT)
Our EON3.org portal page has been updated.
…leading to our various blogs:
EON’s Published articles this year
Counterpunch and Reader Supported News:
The California – New Mexico Nuclear Connection
June 7, 2018 by James HeddleYucca Redux and the Nuclear Shell Game
May 17, 2018 by James Heddle
Counterpunch:
Rational Insanity: the Mad Logic of America’s Nuclear ‘Doomsday Machine’
by James Heddle January 9, 2018
Reader Supported News:
RADIOACTIVE WASTE-GATE - Confronting the Nuclear Constipation Conundrum
by James Heddle May 24, 2018
Point Reyes Light:
War gaming the science on cell phones and health risks:
A conversation with journalist Mark Dowie
By Mary Beth Brangan and Jim Heddle 06/28/2018
EON’s MB Brangan quoted in articles on 5G:
Marin Independent Journal — September 20, 2018
Small cell antenna opponents ask Marin supervisors to stiffen regulationsPt. Reyes Light — October 4, 2018
Questions and criticism follow 5G rule
EON TV interviews:
Celebrated news commentator Peter B. Collins focused two recent interviews for his global audience on the issues covered by EON - the Ecological Options Network. Produced by Ginger Souders-Mason for the Community Media Center of Marin, cmcm.tv