By the time work is complete, all that will remain will be two dry storage facilities housing canisters of used-up nuclear fuel from the days when the plant still produced electricity, a security building with personnel to look over the waste enclosed in casks, a seawall 28 to 30 feet high, a walkway connecting two beaches north and south of the plant and a switch-yard with power lines. The first jobs include erecting staging areas and temporary trailers in the plant’s parking lots and removing materials containing asbestos in the Units 2 and 3 domes. The plant’s operator, Southern California Edison, has mailed notices to about 12,000 residents in a five-mile radius of the plant that initial work will start no earlier than Feb. Seven years after the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station officially went offline, the eight-year process of physically dismantling the plant and knocking down the domes that have loomed over the landscape of Camp Pendleton for four decades is about to begin. With no strings tying them to specific cities or towns, they wander from destination to destination for months on end.
Many vanlifers are also “digital nomads” who work remotely online, such as freelance writers, software developers, or content creators.
“You’re never a local.” For those who haven’t heard of it, “vanlife” refers to a recent bohemian trend of people buying cargo vans, old ambulances, school buses and other boxy vehicles, and converting them into livable apartments on wheels (think of it as a do-it-yourself RV). “You’re constantly in places you don’t know and around people you don’t know,” Shisler said. The downside of a nomadic lifestyle is that you have no community, Shisler said. The app currently connects longterm travelers with one another while on the road, solving the problem of loneliness that weighs on this group of individuals. Inspired by a social media phenomenon, Breanne Acio, a former San Diego State University lecturer, and public relations worker Jessica Shisler teamed up in 2018 to pave the way for the drifter movement known online as “vanlife.” They created a mobile application, aptly called The Vanlife App, that’s just secured the two women spots in a competitive Techstars accelerator program for promising startups. Two San Diego women have created an app for travelers that’s gaining a sizable following of nomadic young people living out of vans.
The defendants have maintained their innocence, denying claims brought by former clients of medical negligence, financial elder abuse and fraud. Reign, who has been living with her husband in a $3 million home in Newport Beach, according to legal documents, is currently embroiled in legal challenges concerning several neuropathy treatment clinics she owns and operates with a chiropractor. The campaign - which turned out hundreds of anti-lockdown protesters from San Diego to Sacramento starting May 1 and continuing through this weekend - also has had a charismatic front woman with something of a controversial past: 38-year-old Vivienne Nicole Reign. The group, which popped up in just the last two weeks, has a professional-looking website and growing social media presence, which provide details for upcoming events, instructions for dealing with the media, highly produced Instagram videos, as well as T-shirts and other branded merchandise for sale.
A group calling itself We Have Rights has recently started organizing large back-to-work protests throughout California, calling on state and local leaders to end social-distancing orders aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus.