A California Superior Court judge ruled last week against a request by a watchdog organization to suspend the transfer of used reactor fuel into dry storage at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS).
In a motion filed with the court in October, El Cajon-based Citizens’ Oversight sought the temporary halt and authorization for discovery to determine whether SONGS majority owner Southern California Edison is conducting a ‘commercially reasonable’ attempt to move the radioactive waste to another location.
Southern California Edison committed to such an effort under a 2017 settlement to a lawsuit filed by Citizens’ Oversight against the utility and the California Coastal Commission challenging the expansion of the San Diego County plant’s storage pad to hold additional spent fuel.
“Petitioners have failed to carry their burden to establish a breach of the 2017 settlement agreement as it was written (as opposed to how petitioners perhaps now wish it had been written),” Superior Court Judge Timothy Taylor wrote in his ruling. “It seems unreasonable to this court to wheel up the mechanisms of discovery in a dismissed, settled case based on these several layers of speculation. The request for an injunction, discovery, and a future evidentiary hearing seems to the court to be an attempt to gain leverage via delay so that the 2017 agreement can be renegotiated.”
The settlement enabled SCE to move forward with transferring used fuel from SONGS Reactor Units 2 and 3, which permanently closed in 2013, from cooling pools to dry storage. The fuel offload continues, after being suspended for nearly a year following an August 2018 incident that left a filled canister at risk of an 18-foot drop into its storage slot.
When the transfer is completed, roughly 3.5 million pounds of fuel assemblies from SONGS’ three reactors will be stored near the ocean for an indeterminate amount of time.
In a statement, SCE said it is working to meet the terms of the settlement. The utility in June awarded a contract to infrastructure and environmental services specialist North Wind Inc. to begin work on a strategic plan to move the fuel off-site.
