The state of California should by the first quarter of 2019 give formal approval for major decommissioning to begin on the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), an executive with the decommissioning general contractor said on June 8.
SONGS Decommissioning Solutions, a partnership of AECOM and EnergySolutions, expects the California State Lands Commission will by the end of June release the draft version of the required environmental impact report (EIR) for the project. The document, according to the state agency, will evaluate the plan for decontamination and disassembly of the plant’s onshore infrastructure; removal, partial removal, or sustainment of offshore concrete intake and discharge coolant pipes; and resoration of the property over one to three decades.
Release of the draft EIR begins a public comment period of at least 60 days on the document, according to Matthew Marston, senior vice president and executive sponsor at SONGS Decommissioning Solutions.
The Lands Commission should vote on the final environmental impact report in the fourth quarter of this year. That document will contribute to the California Coastal Commission’s consideration of issuing a coastal development permit for decommissioning of the plant that sits along the Pacific coast in San Diego County. SONGS majority owner Southern California Edison (SCE) expects to submit its permit application in October, a spokeswoman said this week.
“Until we receive a coastal development permit we are not allowed to do any major dismantling D&D activities on site,” Marston said last week during a presentation at the ExchangeMonitor’s Decommissioning Strategy Forum in Nashville. “We’re not allowed to do any ground-disturbing activities.“
The permit should be issued by the end of next March, more than two years after Southern California Edison awarded the $1 billion decommissioning contract to the AECOM-EnergySolutions venture.
The team has not been idle. It has effectively completed the first of three phases of the decommissioning program – assuming management of 21 plant systems at SONGS, including safety, engineering, and radiation control and protection.
SONGS was permanently closed in 2013 due to faulty steam generators installed in its two remaining operational reactors, Units 2 and 3 (Unit 1 closed in 1992 and has already been decommissioned). Decommissioning is expected to cost $4.4 billion and to wrap up by 2028. “We’re pretty aggressive with respect to our schedule,” Marston said.
The second phase of the project will involve the majority of decommissioning and dismantlement. The scope of D&D covers demolition of all structures to 3 feet below grade, to the point that the plant’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission license can be reduced solely to the on-site independent spent fuel storage installation.
The third phase covers the subgrade restoration requirements necessary once the site’s final end state is determined through the regulatory processes, Marston said. That remains to be determined.
Marston sketched out the approach for the decommissioning. Crews will start by clearing areas of the property for staging of operations and loading and removal of cleanup debris. Demolition on the north side of the property will provide room for a rail spur to enable off-site shipment of concrete, rebar, and other debris. That will be followed by removal of turbine buildings to prepare a route to the intake area. Buildings between the reactor containment domes will eventually be demolished, along with other structures, and then the containment buildings themselves. That leaves surface leveling to prepare the site for unrestricted use.
Marston noted that because the plant is on land owned by the U.S. Navy, SONGS Decommissioning Solutions will also have to meet federal regulatory requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act. That will include securing lease extensions for the property, which now fully expire in 2024.
The status of the spent fuel left at the site is beyond the scope of SONGS Decommissioning Solutions contract. Holtec International has been contracted for transfer and storage of the radioactive material from Units 2 and 3 on an expanded ISFSI that already holds the Unit 1 fuel assemblies.
As of the latest update from Southern California Edison, on June 1, Holtec had relocated 444 fuel assemblies from wet storage to dry storage. Another 74 assemblies were in transit and 2,150 assemblies remained in the cooling pool. The transfer is expected to be completed in 2019.
To settle a state lawsuit brought by a local citizens’ group, the utility agreed last year to seek “commercially reasonable” means for moving the used fuel off-site. Failing that, it will likely have to wait for the Department of Energy to take the waste, as required by Congress in 1982. The department is already more than two decades behind its Jan. 31, 1998, deadline to begin disposal of spent fuel from U.S. nuclear reactors.
