The head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) it is safe to store spent nuclear fuel generated by the San Onofore Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) on site.
“The NRC has concluded that storage of spent fuel at reactor sites (and at away-from-reactor sites) can safely continue until a repository becomes available,” Kristine Svinicki, chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) wrote in the letter dated Nov. 14.
In October, Issa wrote NRC to ask about a dozen specific questions about the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) at SONGS, located near San Diego, Calif. The questions were developed by Rita Macdonald and Dr. Bart Zeigler of the Del Mar, Calif.-based Samuel Lawrence Foundation. The advocacy foundation launched a nuclear-energy program after the 2011 Fukushima disaster and have been active in potential disaster-education efforts since.
The ISFSI is located between a major Interstate and the Pacific Ocean, only about 100 feet from the shoreline. Concerns over public health and environmental safety led groups such as Citizens Oversight, El Cajon, Calif., to challenge SCE’s storage plans.
Citizens Oversight settled a lawsuit in California courts with SONGS owner Southern California Edison (SCE) in October. The settlement pushes SCE to use “commercially reasonable efforts” move the SONGS spent fuel to another site, possibly to the partially-SCE-owned Palo Verde nuclear plant near Phoenix, Ariz.
SCE is legally bound by the settlement to ask about moving the SONGS fuel to Arizona, but Palo Verde’s primary owner, Arizona Public Service, has said it would not take the waste because of licensing issues.
If no alternatives manifest themselves, SCE plans to store the fuel onsite at SONGS indefinitely — or at least until it can be moved to a permanent nuclear-waste repository, such as the proposed Yucca Mountain site in Nye County, Nev.
DOE this year said it would resume its application to license Yucca with NRC, but Congress has not agreed to fund the application yet.
