A reader has a couple of corrections

And another has a bit to say about Don Bauder

Author

Publish Date

Jan. 24, 2018

The smell of fish innards was the smell of money.

No such thing as Le Croix

Kindly explain to Mr. Thomas Larson that there is no such expression as “the youngest of two” [“In my heart I hate it,” cover story]. Youngest implies three or more.

The Lyft ride is a metaphor for Little Italy. Easy in, easy out. No responsibilities, no reason to overnight. (Matthew Suárez)

Also, on page 48 of this week’s issue [“It’s true what they say about Hamilton,” theater review], Mr. Jeff Smith mentions that Alexander Hamilton grew up on one the Caribbean island of Le Croix.

He was born on Nevis in the British West Indies and worked between his eleventh and thirteenth years on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands before heading to the American colonies for his education.

Has Bauder indeed lost all credibility?

Re: “Nuclear waste at the beach saves money is why,” News Ticker.

Dear Editor,

San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station

Don Bauder is frittering away his credibility writing another San Onofre story? It must be Thursday. In a January 3 article, Bauder interviewed a Carlsbad crackpot who claimed that humans are incapable of modifying the sea wall at San Onofre to keep pace with the rise in ocean level, currently at two centimeter per century.

He makes the deceptive claim that once over the wall, the sea water will quickly dissolve the stainless steel surrounding the fuel. The crackpot would have you believe that no one will know nor react because SCE does not monitor for leaks. SCE does in fact monitor for leaks and corrosion. The crackpot concludes this will be a Fukushima-style event. He fails to mention that no one has died from radiation at Fukushima, nor is there any mention of the effect on the rest of SoCal from his ludicrous projection of a ten-foot rise in sea level in thirty years.

In a December 15 article, Bauder, apparently relying on an undisclosed mechanical engineering degree, had determined that the fuel canister walls are too thin to safeguard the public as designed. No mention if SCE gave him access to the fuel bundle weight and heat load data for his calculation, or if Bauder simply made it up.

Now, in his latest, Bauder makes the ridiculous claim that SCE is trying to save rate payer money by keeping the fuel on site. In the thirty years I have lived in SoCal, SCE has never, to my knowledge, made a business decision that helped the rate payer unless it was as a side effect of another business goal.

What is worse, Bauder thinks that saving rate payer money is somehow a bad thing. The reality is, removing the fuel from pools to on-site dry storage and then shipping it to final disposition at a later date is much more expensive than if SCE had simply shipped the fuel to final disposition.

I’m not current on the situation (I rely on Bauder as a news source), but the last I checked the spent fuel at SONGS is required to stay on site until the Federal Government completes construction of a national repository. Edison has no choice in the matter. If this is true and it has been deliberately left out of your coverage, Bauder has indeed lost all credibility.

Greg Wade
San Clement