Southern California Edison (SCE) on Tuesday gave newly elected Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) the business over his recent warning about the safety of spent nuclear fuel in storage at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS).
“There is no credible scenario in which this tweet from @MikeLevinCA would be factual,” the California utility, majority owner and licensee for the retired nuclear power plant in San Diego County, said in its own tweet. “Moving spent fuel away from SONGS is an important issue. False claims not based in science should have no place in the discussion.”
The message was a direct response to this tweet from Levin, a day earlier: “A worst-case scenario nuclear disaster at San Onofre would be devastating for millions of people. We cannot allow the status quo to continue indefinitely, which is why we must find new solutions to deal with the grave safety challenges we face.”
Levin was elected in November to represent California’s 49th Congressional District, which covers the property on which SONGS sits. He succeeded longtime Rep. Darrell Issa (R), who did not seek re-election.
In January, Levin announced formation of a task force to address safety issues at the nuclear plant. It will be led by former Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko and retired Navy Rear Adm. Leendert Hering Sr.
Levin’s office this week did not respond to multiple requests for comment on plans for the task force or what would constitute a worst-case scenario at the nuclear plant.
Reactor Unit 1 at SONGS shut down in 1992 and has since been largely decommissioned. Units 2 and 3 were permanently retired in 2013 after being equipped with faulty steam generators. The California Coastal Commission could in a matter of months issue a coastal development permit needed before major decommissioning operations on the two remaining reactors can begin.
More than 3.5 million pounds of used fuel from SONGS’ three reactors is either in wet or dry storage on-site at the property alongside the Pacific Ocean. Contractor Holtec International has been moving the remaining fuel assemblies from Units 2 and 3 to an expanded dry storage pad, but that operation has been suspended since an August 2018 mishap in loading one canister into place. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering fines or other forms of enforcement for the incident; it will also review SCE’s plan to resume the spent fuel transfer before work begins.
On its community engagement website for the plant decommissioning, SCE notes that “San Onofre is designed to withstand the maximum credible earthquake for its location without releasing radioactive materials.” That applies to hardened spent fuel pools and dry storage.
Still, to settle a lawsuit over waste storage, it agreed in 2017 to evaluate “commercially reasonable” options for moving the used fuel off-site. That process continues, including preparation of transportation and strategic plans for relocating the radioactive waste.
Asked about the brief Twitter skirmish with Levin, Southern California Edison forwarded a statement prepared at the time of the announcement of the task force’s formation last month. In that statement, the utility said it welcomed the congressman’s interest and emphasized their shared interest in moving the spent fuel to a temporary storage site or permanent repository.
Southern California Edison also encouraged Levin to work with the SONGS Community Engagement Panel, which it formed in 2014, “on his ideas about solving long-term spent nuclear fuel storage issues, and explore ways we can partner on our shared goals. Hopefully, together, all stakeholders can collaborate to accelerate national efforts to approve and complete spent fuel storage alternatives.”
The California State Lands Commission is due this month to complete its final environmental impact report on decommissioning of Units 2 and 3. The commission itself then could consider approval of the report in March. With the report in hand, Southern California Edison expects to go to the Coastal Commission in April for approval of the coastal development permit needed for major decommissioning to begin. Originally, SCE expected to seek the coastal development permit last November, but it needed the environmental impact report first.
SONGS Decommissioning Solutions, managing contractor for the anticipated $4.4 billion decommissioning, has said it wants all necessary state regulatory approvals by the end of the first quarter of 2019. The AECOM-EnergySolutions joint venture aims to finish work within a decade, covering dismantlement and decontamination, site restoration, and radioactivity reduction.
SONGS Reef
Separately, the California Coastal Commission is requiring Southern California Edison to expand an underwater artificial reef offshore from SONGS, and will spend the next few months tackling the details.
The Lands Commission on Monday approved raising SCE’s rent for the reef from $156,960 a year to $346,500 a year — a hike tied to the reef expansion.
Warm discharge water from SONGS’ former power operations killed the kelp growing on an existing nearby natural reef, which had a ripple effect on the area’s fish. Consequently, SCE was required by its state coastal development permit to build a $45 million artificial underwater reef — dubbed the “Wheeler North Reef” — where kelp would grow that fish could feed on. That work was finished in 2008.
The Wheeler North Reef is a mix of sand and rock covering 174.4 acres of ocean floor, and is supposed be home to 150 acres of kelp — a brown algae stretching toward the surface in shallow water, which looks like a forest. That kelp is supposed to be a food source for 28 tons of fish, wrote Kate Huckelbridge, a senior environmental scientist with the Coastal Commission, in an email. Also, the new reef has failed to provide 150 acres of kelp in two years since 2009.
“The independent scientists analyzed the data they had and determined that (the Wheeler North Reef) was behaving like a natural reef, but it was too small to consistently provide the fish biomass and kelp resources as required but the permit. As a result, the executive director of the coastal commission required SCE to remediate the reef by expanding its size, so it will be big enough to provide the resources as required by the permit,” Huckelbridge wrote.
So far, SCE has not received any mitigation credit from the Coastal Commission for the Wheeler North Reef because it has not met the 28-tons-of-fish and 150-acres-of-kelp goals, according to a staff memo to the commission.
Consequently, the commission wants to expand the Wheeler North Reef to 385 acres — a $20 million project. The commission staff memo acknowledged that SCE might raise rates to pay for the project.
The staff memo recommended that the 175,0000 tons of rock — each 500 to 1,000 pounds in weight — be barged from two Santa Catalina Island quarries and from a third quarry in Ensenada, Mexico, to 23 locations adjacent to the existing reef. The rocks would be dropped into water ranging from 38 feet to 49 feet deep. Staff recommended that the project occur between May 1 and Oct. 1, 2019, to take advantage of calm water and to avoid lobster-fishing season.
