The Olympics LA28 Organizing Committee has announced that Lower Trestles, the world-class surf break next to the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, will host the surfing competition for the 2028 Olympics. While this may be celebrated as a cultural win for Southern California, it raises urgent and unsettling questions. Just yards from where Olympians will compete, 3.6 million pounds of high-level radioactive waste sit in thin-walled, welded stainless steel canisters, buried near the shoreline, a few feet above the water table. These canisters were never 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.
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.
