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WHAT’S INSIDE: NEWS 2
OCTA boss announced this week OPINION 5
Leave tobacco alone FEATURES 6
Man seeks kidney donation FITNESS 8
Coffee reaps benefits
Charity - Camp Titan hosts its annual Toy Drive to help underprivileged children in Orange County.
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T U E S D AY, D E C E M B E R 4 , 2 0 1 2
LOCAL PROJECTS DRAG ALONG AFTER SETBACK
dailytitan.com LOCAL | Electricity
Edison aims to reinstate reactors at nuclear plant
Operators submit proposal to restore generators to full use depite safety concerns JONATHAN WINSLOW Daily Titan
RAE ROMERO / Daily Titan
State funds dry out
Projects like road improvements on Bradford and Placentia avenues have slowed because of state budget woes.
Construction continues after dissolution of local redevelopment agencies DANIEL HERNANDEZ
CA TAKES MONEY BACK
Daily Titan
The city of Placentia’s plans for a public train station to be built in the summer of 2013 sustained a slight blow when the state’s redevelopment agencies were dissolved last year. Like Placentia, many local cities have dealt with the windfall of the dissolution of California’s 397 municipal redevelopment agencies, and although some cities are coping with a shortage of cash for plans that were already in progress, officials said the projects are still moving forward. “We lost a very critical tool for economic development,” said Placentia assistant city administrator Ken Domer about the redevelopment agencies, which had existed for more than 40 years.
State began year with projected $26.6 billion deficit 400 redevelopment agencies dissolved Feb. 1, 2012 State expected $1.7 billion back in 2012 $400 million a year thereafter SOURCE: CALIFORNIA WATCH
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Students make finals at festival
Five students narrowly miss $500 prize in statewide art contest DANIEL HERNANDEZ Daily Titan
The art of creating a film and piecing together a story lies in the compelling nature of the tale and the technical abilities applied. Exhibiting their creations to an audience and a panel of judges, five Titans advanced to the final show at this year’s Media Arts Festival held at Cal State Fullerton on Nov. 10. “It’s all about the storytelling,” said Shelley Jenkins, media arts liaison and a radio-TV-film lecturer. “If the story’s compelling and it’s entertaining to the audience, those are typically the ones that get through.” Three Titans placed second in their respective categories: Kevin Lam in the animation category for his work in “Telly,” Jorge Perezchicain the experimental category for his piece called “Tragarsele La Tierra: Disappear into the Blue”; and Lauren Small in the narrative category for her piece “Grand Escape.”
They all came the closest to winning the $500 prize and the coveted Rose Bud award. Natalie Rodriguez placed fourth in the screenplay category for her work in Wilson. Scott Kazan placed third in the experimental category for his short film The War on Love. The Media Arts Festival is a CSU-wide event designed to bring together the work of its students and have their projects critiqued by a panel of industry professionals, said Joanne Sharp, director of the Media Arts Festival. “It gives students a chance to get feedback from a system-wide panel, but also to sort of see the best work being done in the CSU is,” said Sharp. The festival stems from the Summer Arts program, which is another CSU-wide program involving artists who live and work together for 12 or more hours a day, she said. This year’s keynote speaker at the event was Brannon Braga, the writer and executive producer of the Fox television series 24. SEE FESTIVAL, 6
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LOCAL | Exercise % students who passed fitness test
CAMPUS | Media Arts
Operators of the San Onofre power plant made a case last week to bring one of its reactors back online in spite of controversies that flooded the station over the last year. The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station has had a history of safety concerns, ranging from oddities during inspections in the past to more recent suspicion of outside tampering. The major issue that has sparked so much discussion recently is the premature degradation of tubes in the steam generators in Unit 2 and Unit 3 of the plant. Each reactor unit has two steam generators. Both units have been shut down since the worn tubing was discovered in January earlier this year. The wearing was particularly bad in Unit 3, which resulted in a minor radioactive gas leak. Both units have been shut down since the problem was uncovered. Unit 1, the only other reactor ever at the plant, was permanently shut down and dismantled in 1992. Nearly a year after the shutdown, Edison has attempted to make a case that Unit 2 is now safe to operate once again. The proposed plan is to restart Unit 2 at only 70 percent power and keep it running for five months before shutting it back down to ensure it is working correctly. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is currently reviewing the plan and is expected to take months to reach a decision regard-
ing Edison’s proposal. A large number of protesters were at the hearing last week, including anti-nuclear activists as well as Buddhist monks. There is great concern from such people that reactivating the plant is a bad idea. Amanda Dusse, 23, an electrical engineering major at Cal State Fullerton, is not sure that nuclear power is the way to go in California. “I don’t feel really comfortable,” said Dusse. “I don’t know if it’s a disaster waiting to happen, but you should be careful.” Dusse said she would prefer that energy be generated from safer methods, rather than from nuclear plants. If things were to go awry in the steam generators, it is possible that radioactive material would leak into the ocean, potentially creating a scenario similar to the Fukushima Daiichi disaster that Japan suffered a year ago. At Fukushima, there was a core meltdown, and radioactive material leaked into the environment, causing a great deal of complications. Greg Childers, a CSUF physics professor, explained that a comparable disaster at the San Onofre plant is extremely unlikely, and expects that the plant should be fine as long as the new pipes are placed correctly. “You certainly can’t exclude the possibility of a disaster happening, but it’s extremely unlikely,” said Childers. Childers explained that nuclear power plants in earthquake prone areas such as California are wellbuilt to withstand earthquakes larger than the area can suffer, along with other safety considerations that make such a large scale disaster such as what happened in Chernobyl completely impossible.
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FITNESS: O.C. OUTPLAYS THE STATE
40 30 20
31
38 25
31
32
41
37
California Orange County
43
10 0
Overall
Fifth graders
Seventh graders
Ninth graders
SOURCE: CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND THE ORANGE COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
OC beats average despite fitness slump Socioeconomic status found to play role in the physical education test results of local gradeschoolers KYMBERLIE ESTRADA Daily Titan
Results from the 2012 California Physical Fitness Test showed that three in five public school students in Orange County failed the fitness exam. California acquired the Fitnessgram in 1996, a fitness assessment developed in 1982 by the Cooper Institute. The test is designed to assess the Health Fitness Zone (HFZ) standards among students. The test is broken down into six fitness areas that include aerobic capacity, body composition, abdominal strength, trunk extensor strength, upper body strength and flexibility. The Physical Fitness Test (PFT) is administered each year to public school students in
grades five, seven and nine. Under Education Code Section 60800, it is required that all California school districts administer the test. Orange County fell 1 percent in the number of students who passed the HFZ, signifying that all six tests were achieved. In 2011, 39 percent of students posted healthy scores and 38 percent passed in 2012. More than 100,000 Orange County students took the test this year out of the total 1.3 million tests issued throughout California. The 2012 PFT results show almost 30 percent of California students in grades five, seven and nine are in the high-risk category for body composition. “Students that fall into this high risk category based on body composition has to do with a number of factors,” said Chris Corliss, program coordinator for the Center for Healthy Kids & Schools at the Orange County Department of Education. According to Corliss, the factors include
schools with more socioeconomically disadvantaged students experienced lower pass rates because it is unsafe for them to play outside for students living in lower-income neighborhoods. “Less than 10 percent of public schools in Orange County have fitness education specialists,” Corliss said about lower-income school’s limited tools and resources. “There’s a much higher percent of low income kids for whom school is the only place where they might have access to physical activity,” he said. According to the Orange County Register, there are currently 53,377 socioeconomically disadvantaged students in Orange County. Among high schools in Orange County, Laguna Beach High School had the most students pass the test, with 70 percent of ninth graders passing all six areas of the assessment. SEE FITNESS, 3