Southern California Edison intends to apply lessons learned from an error in loading spent reactor fuel into storage at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) to its oversight of the upcoming decommissioning at the retired power plant, according to a senior manager with the utility.
“We’ve done a number of things to make our oversight more robust. We’re bringing in additional industry experts to help with oversight, independent assessments of our oversight organization,” Vince Bilovsky, deputy decommissioning officer for Southern California Edison (SCE), told RadWaste Monitor.
All of this will happen under intense scrutiny from local residents, elected officials, and watchdog groups, which was heightened even before the August 2018 mishap.
The California Coastal Commission could next week approve a coastal development permit that will allow SCE’s contractor, SONGS Decommissioning Solutions, to begin major onshore decommissioning of the final two standing reactors on the San Diego County property. The utility expects the $4.4 billion decontamination and teardown to be completed by 2028.
Built on a land easement at the U.S. Marine Corps’ Base Camp Pendleton, SONGS’ power production life lasted from 1968 to 2012. Reactor Unit 1 was retired in 1992 and has been largely dismantled. The remaining reactors, Units 2 and 3, were shut down in 2012 after being equipped with faulty steam generators, then permanently retired the next year.
The first major order of business for Southern California Edison, the plant’s majority owner, was to move the spent fuel from the two reactors from wet storage to dry storage. Toward that, it hired Holtec International in 2014 to expand SONGS’ existing storage pad and then conduct the actual “pool to pad” waste transfer.
Keeping the used fuel on-site in a seismically active region bounded by the Pacific Ocean and a major interstate was not a popular decision among many locals. Ultimately, it is the U.S. Department of Energy’s legal responsibility to find a permanent home for the material – but that could be decades away. To settle a lawsuit filed against the spent fuel pad expansion, SCE in 2017 agreed to take “commercially reasonable” steps to find an off-site storage location, a process that is still developing. In the meantime, the settlement allowed the on-site fuel process to proceed.
On Aug. 3, 2018, workers were placing one canister into its holding slot when it became hung up on a shield ring. It took personnel nearly an hour to identify and fix the problem, during which the container was at risk of dropping nearly 20 feet.
A U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspection determined that the incident represented a breach of federal nuclear safety rules. Southern California Edison in March paid a $116,000 federal penalty.
Southern California Edison and Holtec said they have taken a number of measures to improve the used fuel offloading, including enhanced procedures and training and stronger oversight.
“We take a much closer look at the modifications, the training, the procedures, really a close look at all the procedures in that organization,” said Bilovsky, who has been focused on SONGS’ recovery from the incident since joining Southern California Edison in January. He previously served as vice president for engineering and environmental services provider Enercon Services.
The NRC in May authorized resumption of the fuel offload, pending a readiness review by SCE and Holtec in coming weeks. The end date for the project has been pushed back from early this year to spring 2020.
Stronger oversight will be central to SCE’s relationship with all its contractors going forward, the company said in response to follow-up questions after the telephone interview with Bilovsky.
Oversight specialists will now directly participate in contractor training programs and will receive direction on intervention in contractor operations “with a focus on immediately addressing performance weaknesses in a constructive manner,” the company said. Among other updates, the company will more assertively review the qualifications of its contractors.
Bilovsky emphasized what he called “concentric rings” of oversight, including specialists who directly monitor contractor work and a separate quality-assurance team.
“While these improvements were mainly developed out of the lessons learned in Fuel Transfer Operations (FTO), the principles are transferable to the decommissioning activities and we will perform periodic independent assessments to ensure effectiveness and sustainability,” the company said.
Forty-four of 73 canisters of used fuel remain to be transferred. When finished, the spent fuel pad will hold about 3.5 million pounds of waste.
Some local observers remain skeptical that the companies and their federal regulator have conducted the due diligence needed to safely resume the fuel transfer.
“I called for a full-time NRC inspector at the facility because Southern California Edison proved after the ‘near-miss’ canister incident that we need a higher level of transparency, accountability, and oversight,” Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.), whose congressional district covers SONGS, said last week in a statement to RadWaste Monitor. “Until a full-time NRC inspector is in place, I will remain strongly concerned about the loading of spent nuclear fuel at this site.”
Earlier this month, Levin introduced legislation that would give the plant priority in the eventual removal of the used fuel to an off-site storage location.
Even with the extended suspension, the used fuel transfer program is still expected to overlap with major decommissioning operations by about six months, Bilovsky said. That is due to the longer-than-anticipated time needed for the California State Lands Commission to complete and approve an environmental impact report on SONGS’ decommissioning.
“It would have been better if we could have finished the fuel transfers before starting decommissioning, but that’s how the original schedule laid out and how things got pushed to the right,” according to Bilovsky.
The Lands Commission approved the environmental report in March, the month after SCE filed its application for the coastal development permit.
In a May 24 report, staff at the Coastal Commission recommended approval of the permit, but with 18 special conditions for Southern California Edison. Those include demonstrating approval for decommissioning from the landowner, in this case the U.S. Navy; showing that all other necessary permits have been obtained; filing annual progress reports with the state; and filing a permit modification by June 1, 2028, including plans for site restoration.
“We understand them pretty well and we’re ready to address those,” Bilovsky said.
Vince Bilovsky, deputy decommissioning officer for Southern California Edison, will join other industry experts at the ExchangeMonitor’s Decommissioning Strategy Forum, June 17-18 in Nashville, Tenn.
