Another canister of spent fuel was being transferred to dry storage Thursday evening at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), even as an executive affirmed majority owner Southern California Edison’s (SCE) hopes to find an off-site home for the radioactive waste.
“We have engaged a strategic team to put together a plan that we will review, and that’s on track to be completed by the end of the year,” Doug Bauder, SCE’s vice president for decommissioning and chief nuclear officer, said during an online meeting of the SONGS Community Engagement Panel. The plan, he said, “will include optionality and actions for relocation of the fuel off-site.”
An SCE spokesman said Thursday he could not elaborate on the contents of the document: “The plan is still being worked on and is not in final form.”
Bauder was calling from his office at the retired nuclear power plant in San Diego County, where contractor Holtec International was offloading the 64th of 73 canisters of spent nuclear fuel from reactor Units 2 and 3. That job was expected to wrap up Thursday, with all canisters placed in the dry-storage pad by midsummer, Bauder said.
At that point, about 3.5 million pounds of fuel assemblies from SONGS’ three reactors will be in below-ground storage along the Pacific Ocean.
SONGS’s first reactor began operations in 1968, with Unit 1 closing in 1992 and Units 2 and 3 following in 2013 after they were equipped with faulty steam generators.
Unit 1 has been largely decommissioned, while contractor SONGS Decommissioning Solutions began major cleanup operations on the other two reactors in February. That work has been limited in recent months during the COVID-19 pandemic, to prevent workers from potentially spreading the respiratory virus.
Generally, there are about 400 personnel on-site at SONGS, but some are currently telecommuting. There have been no positive cases of COVID-19 to date among the workforce at SONGS, Bauder said. “If we get any challenges at all to our worker safety and health we will stand down that appropriate work.”
Asbestos removal of the containment building has been completed, ahead of demolition operations. The 770-ton reactor pressure vessel from Unit 1 has also been shipped off-site for disposal. As of Thursday night, it was on a train rolling through Nevada on its way to EnergySolutions’ low-level radioactive waste disposal facility in Clive, Utah.
EnergySolutions is one of the partners in SONGS Decommissioning Solutions. Its partner, infrastructure multinational AECOM, said in early April it is in negotiations to sell its stake. The company has not identified the potential buyer.
Decommissioning of the final two reactors is scheduled to be completed by December 2028, at a projected cost of $4.4 billion, according to a revised post-shutdown decommissioning activities report (PSDAR) Southern California Edison submitted on May 7 to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That will involve decontamination, dismantlement, and demolition of facilities and infrastructure, along with removal and disposal of all waste. Southern California Edison is on the hook for three-fourths of the decommissioning obligations for both reactors, with 20% held by fellow utility San Diego Gas & Electric and the rest divided between the cities of Anaheim and Riverside.
The PSDAR forecasts on-site storage of SONGS’ used fuel through December 2045, based on the utility’s estimate from 2017 that the Department of Energy would begin taking the material from Units 2 and 3 in 2034.
The Energy Department is responsible under legislation enacted to 1982 for disposal of spent fuel from commercial nuclear power plants and high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear operations. Congress set a Jan. 31, 1998, deadline for disposal to begin, but DOE still does not have any place to put the waste.
Keeping SONGS’ used fuel in a densely populated, seismically active region about 100 feet from the ocean has been a major worry for local advocacy organizations and residents. While Southern California Edison has emphasized the safety of the storage system, those fears were exacerbated by an August 2018 incident in which one canister was left at risk of an 18-foot drop into its slot for nearly an hour. That led to a nearly yearlong pause in the fuel offload and a $116,000 fine from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Several groups have sought assistance from the federal courts and NRC to force Southern California Edison to relocate the material, so far without any success.
But, to settle a lawsuit from the organization Citizens’ Oversight over the storage plan, Southern California Edison committed in August 2017 to pursue “commercially reasonable” efforts to fine a new home for the canisters. The strategic plan is part of that pledge.
Idaho-based environmental services specialist North Wind was hired last June to prepare the document, with assistance from a panel of experts formed by SCE.
“We are very focused on safely storing it here at SONGS, but we’re also focused on finding the right place for it to go,” Bauder said during the meeting. He did not elaborate on what optionalities and actions might be included in the strategic plan.
In a November 2019 briefing to the Community Engagement Panel, North Wind executives said the plan would address issues such as the means for transporting the spent fuel – by train or truck – along with options such as consolidated spent fuel storage facilities being planned for Texas and New Mexico. Those facilities, pending licensing by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, could open by the mid-2020s.
Bauder said SCE expects to meet the deadline for responding to a notice of violation from the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board following a March 25 release of 7,000 gallons of wastewater from SONGS’ sewage treatment facility. The spill did not involve radioactive material, he said:“The radioactive systems at SONGS are completely isolated from the sewage system and the storm drains.”
Bauder’s presentation lasted about 10 minutes at the top of a meeting focused on discussion of potential “outlier event,” such as acts of terrorism, at the facility.
