November 04, 2015

Lawsuit Opposes San Onofre Waste Burial Permit

By ExchangeMonitor

A California watchdog group this week requested that the state Superior Court block a permit that would allow for expanding a nuclear waste storage complex at the shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in San Diego Country.

The California Coastal Commission in October signed off on a two-decade permit for the expanded waste site as SONGS operator Southern California Edison works to move SONGS’ spent fuel from cooling pools to dry storage by 2019. The company has said it needs as many as 80 more steel canisters in the interim storage site, which presently encompasses 51 canisters.

In the petition, plaintiffs Patricia Borchmann and Citizens Oversight assert the permit would allow 3.6 million pounds of nuclear waste to be interred just 100 feet from the Pacific Ocean shoreline in a densely populated area subject to earthquakes. [California Gov.] “Jerry Brown’s plan is to take all this nuclear waste and to bury it on the beach in San Diego,” Michael Aguirre, the attorney who filed the petition, said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Southern California Edison failed to consider safer storage alternatives for the waste in Arizona and California, according to the lawsuit.

Plaintiffs in the case are Southern California Edison and the California Coastal Commission. A spokeswoman on Wednesday said the commission had not received formal notification of the petition and could not comment. Southern California Edison also declined to comment.

The utility has said that the steel canisters, encased in concrete, intended to hold the waste underground surpass state earthquake safety requirements and would protect the waste from dangers such as tsunamis or fire.

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