FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, January 9, 2017
Today, the non-profit consumer protection advocacy group Public Watchdogs named Robert Pope, an Orange County resident and pioneer in forensic geology and archeology to its Board of Directors.
Mr. Pope has gone on the record saying that “A nuclear disaster at the San Onofre Nuclear Waste Dump is unavoidable.”
Public Watchdogs opposes the construction of the largest privately owned nuclear waste dump in the U.S.A. at San Onofre State Beach Park by the multinational Southern California Edison. Edison is the owner of the abruptly closed San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) due to a radiation leak in 2012.
Mr. Pope brings decades of expertise in hydrogeology, aerial photogrammetry and land use research and analysis to Public Watchdogs. Additionally, Pope is an expert witness in litigation support services and has broad experience in environmental assessments and compliance audits.
“We are delighted to have Mr. Pope because the public deserves an independent expert to professionally assess the risks of burying radioactive spent nuclear fuel on the unstable bluffs at San Onofre.” Says Charles Langley. Public Watchdogs’ Chief Executive Officer.
According to Public Watchdogs Board member Nina Babiarz, “Southern California Edison (SCE) is playing fast and loose, like riverboat gamblers, with the real risks to the public represented in burying nuclear waste on an earthquake fault, in a tsunami zone, smack in the middle of the second busiest rail corridor in the United States and beside an interstate highway. It makes no common sense.”
Babiarz added that. “Edison’s probability of risk was calculated on a non-operating plant, not on the risks involved in burying the nuclear waste on our beaches. That’s apples and oranges. The public has a right to know the real probability of danger and these hazardous circumstances. After all,” Babiarz contends, “there are 8.5 million lives at stake here, billions in pristine property values, not to mention that there’s a person or a family behind each one of those numbers.”
Vitae of Robert Pope Video of Robert Pope on San Onofre, December 2016
For background or to arrange an interview, contact Charles Langley at (858) 752-4600
