Olympic Surfing Comes to America's Largest Nuclear Waste Dump

Well, thereabouts, 2,000 tons of that high-level radioactive waste, which we might just as well quote Samuel Lawrence Foundation President Dr. Bart Ziegler in saying that it is “The worst poison on the planet.” The Samuel Lawrence Foundation works to promote community awareness and engagement with science, education, and the arts, and has been at the forefront of public interest in the matter of addressing this imminently ticking time bomb. And that time bomb “sits in thin-walled, welded stainless-steel canisters buried near the shoreline”—a mere 100 feet (and shrinking) from the water’s edge, to be exact.

In fact, that’s where Lowers and Teahupo’o do have something in common, albeit a very unfortunate something. Let’s suffice it to say that this is not the first time the Olympics have faced nuke waste issues, either.

Yes, both venues are disturbingly close to nuclear waste sites. And then there was surfing’s inaugural Olympic extravaganza, which took place on Japan’s West Coast, a hop skip and a jump down the beach from Fukushima.

But back to Trestles: We corresponded with Dr. Ziegler, who didn’t want to rain on the celebration of San Clemente’s pride and joy, but hoped the fresh attention would perhaps ignite public interest in seeing to it that this waste is handled properly, once and for all: “While this may be celebrated as a cultural win for Southern California, it raises urgent and unsettling questions. These canisters were not designed for long-term storage, and cannot be opened, inspected, or repaired once sealed. The site is vulnerable to sea-level rise, earthquakes, and erosion–with no permanent disposal solution in place and no emergency evacuation plan for the surrounding region if any natural disaster were to occur.”

Roughly 100,000 people live within 10 miles of the site, and should a crisis occur, the protocol would be to evacuate the 9 million or so humans within 50 miles. And that’s to say absolutely nothing of the marine and terrestrial life in the vicinity, which, even if we could find some way to alert them, would stand no chance at all.

Dr. Ziegler expressed dismay at the decision to welcome such a crowd, but also sees it as an opportunity to generate public awareness and hopefully in turn elicit a call to action. “By placing a global sporting event in the shadow of this unresolved nuclear hazard, LA28 risks doing more than downplaying the danger, it normalizes it and removes fear from the public of the dangers of radiation. The visibility and celebration of this location could desensitize the public to the gravity of the situation, obscuring the reality that SONGS is one of the most precarious nuclear waste storage sites in the nation. We hope to have made strides in seeking permanent storage for the nuclear waste at San Onofre by 2028.”

We hope so, too, Doc.