Members of a California community hosting a former nuclear power plant should hear from the Department of Energy’s acting spent fuel chief this week about the agency’s effort to site a federal interim storage facility, according to a press release from the plant’s operator.
Kim Petry, DOE’s acting assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy, is scheduled to brief San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station’s (SONGS) community engagement panel Thursday on the agency’s interim storage request for information (RFI), Southern California Edison said in a statement dated Feb. 3. The meeting will take place virtually at noon Pacific time.
DOE’s recently-nominated nuclear energy chief Kathryn Huff told Exchange Monitor in January that responses to the RFI, which the agency unveiled in November, have been rolling in and are “creative.” March 4 is the deadline for interested stakeholders to submit comments to DOE.
Currently, there are no federally-operated sites accepting shipments of spent nuclear fuel from power plants. The only location congressionally approved for such a task, Yucca Mountain in Nevada, remains on ice after the Joe Biden administration committed not to fund the site for anything more than physical security in the 2022 fiscal year.
Southern California Edison has been pressuring the feds to take action on the spent fuel issue since March 2021, when it and a coalition of stakeholders formed Action for Spent Fuel Solutions Now, an interest group which has been gaining traction in recent months.
The Pendleton, Calif., SONGS plant has around 123 canisters of spent fuel currently stored onsite at a dry storage pad.
