The Department of Energy official leading the agency’s consent-based nuclear waste storage siting initiative will meet with officials and residents near Southern California’s San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in response to a request from U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).
The program is DOE’s latest attempt to find a permanent home for U.S. nuclear waste, including about 74,000 metric tons of spent fuel that has been accumulating at nuclear plants around the nation. SONGS is just one site where community members have been clamoring for the removal of radioactive waste. Citing the plant’s proximity to an active fault line and the dense population in nearby Orange and San Diego counties, Issa in April requested that DOE add Southern California to its lineup of public meetings on the effort.
In an April 20 letter, acting Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy John Kotek told Issa that DOE is unable to schedule an additional public meeting, but Kotek will appear at the next SONGS Community Engagement Panel meeting on June 22. The panel was established by SONGS owner Southern California Edison as a conduit between the company and the public during the plant’s decommissioning.
Issa on Monday called DOE’s response “encouraging news for Southern California.”
“Until we can either stop the obstruction of Yucca Mountain or find an interim solution, we’re going to be stuck with more than 3.6 million pounds of high-level nuclear waste stored in less-than-optimal conditions in a highly populated area,” Issa said in a statement. “Now that SONGS is shut down, the spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive materials should be removed from the site as soon as possible. I’m pleased the Department of Energy will be sending a senior official to the 49th District to hear more from our local communities about the need to get a long-term storage facility opened as quickly as possible.”
DOE’s public meeting schedule for the consent-based siting initiative, which kicked off in Washington, D.C., includes stops in Denver, Chicago, Atlanta, Sacramento, Tempe, Boise, Boston, and Minneapolis.
SONGS Community Engagement Panel Chairman David Victor, who attended the meeting last week in Sacramento with fellow panel members, said many people in Southern California are excited about the prospect of consolidated interim storage.
“People are enthusiastic about making consolidated storage a reality. What they don’t know is what needs to happen in order to do that,” Victor said.
Kotek’s response to Issa, Victor said, means people are taking consolidated storage seriously, adding that the panel has spent the last 18 months trying to figure out how it can help the practice become a reality.
“We’ve not understood what the federal government is going to do to make this a reality, and now what’s really clear is the department of energy is focused on doing all the spade work necessary to make this option serious, and I think Kotek’s presence is part of that.”
“The Department is committed to working closely with the U.S. Congress and other key stakeholders, such as state utility commissions, nuclear plant operators, and other public and private sector entities, to move forward on a comprehensive path for disposal of both defense and commercial high-level waste and spent nuclear fuel,” Kotek wrote in the letter.
