The movement of used nuclear fuel at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is expected to begin again in early 2020.
Fuel movement was expected to begin in a few weeks and conclude between February and April, Doug Bauder, Southern California Edison’s (SCE) chief nuclear officer at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), said Wednesday during a webcast meeting of the San Onofre Community Engagement Panel in Oceanside, Calif.
In late May, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved SCE and Holtec International to restart fuel movement at SONGS after they finish their internal reviews of a near-mishap in August. The almost-accident prompted a 10-month pause in fuel handling that remained ongoing at deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor.
“We won’t handle any fuel until we’re totally ready,” Bauder said Wednesday.
Fuel movement stopped Aug. 3, 2018, when a 50-ton canister of spent fuel was being inserted into a cylindrical hole on a dry storage pad. The canister got stuck on a shield ring and could have fallen 18 feet to the ground. It took plant personnel nearly an hour to identify and correct the problem.
Following an inspection, the NRC determined in November that SCE: failed to maintain redundant protection to keep the canister from dropping by letting its loading straps go slack; failed to report the incident in a timely manner by waiting three days instead of the required one day; lacked procedures to deal with the incident; inadequately trained the workers conducting the fuel transfer; and failed to take proper, timely action immediately after the mishap occurred.
The NRC fined SCE $116,000 for the incident, which the utility has decided not to fight.
Since August, SCE has: increased the size of the on-the-spot crew inserting the canisters into the storage pad from two to 10; added monitors to ensure tensions on both landing straps; added a quality assurance manager to the fuel-movement program; improved training; upgraded procedures to cover more scenarios; and conducted numerous fuel-transfer practice runs with dummy canisters.
The NRC also has confirmed SCE’s claim that a canister can fall 25 feet without cracking.
Meanwhile, Holtec has named L. Jearl Strickland, who has 38 years of nuclear experience, including a long stint at the Diablo Canyon reactor, to manage SONGS’ fuel movement.
Strickland told the community panel that more Holtec supervisors and workers will be used — along with overhauls in training, procedures and rotating work crews.
“I’m concerned about fatigue and complacency and turnover in staff,” Strickland said. “I want a deep bench strength,”
Strickland said the shield ring — which caused the hang-up in August — is not being reviewed for possible re-engineering.
At the same time, Linda Howell, acting director of the NRC’s Region 4 division of nuclear material safety, and Scott Morris, the NRC’s Region 4 administrator, said they and six other NRC staffers were working this week at the SONGS site.
The NRC officials said the agency will conduct unannounced inspections of the site in the future. When asked about having a permanent NRC inspector at SONGS, they said Kristine Svinicki is mulling that idea, but has not made a decision yet.
“I don’t know what she’s going to say,” Morris said.
At Wednesday’s meeting, several watchdog groups and members of the public said canisters should not be scratched and scraped while being moved, as they can be at SONGS.
“This is an engineering issue, not a training issue,” said San Clemente resident Jeff Steinmetz. Ray Lutz, director of the Citizens Oversight watchdog group, also criticized the NRC for not reviewing the basic design of the fuel-insertion system. “After 29 tries, the design fails,” Lutz said.
Gary Hedrick of the San Clemente Green organization, said: “ I’m beginning to feel like we’re guinea pigs. These (SONGS mishaps) should not be lessons learned,”
The question has arisen the past few months of whether people should worry about abrasions and scratches that have shown up on the canisters from moving and inserting them.
Tiny robots with cameras in them crawled around eight of the 29 inserted canisters to collect data on the abrasions and scratches, Howell said Monday during a separate SONGS webinar.
NRC inspectors were “standing side-by side” with Holtec and SCE experts during the data collection on seven of those canisters. The government regulators said Holtec’s ’conclusion of no problems [with those canisters] was “conservative.”
On Wednesday, Tom Palmisano, SCE’s vice president for external affairs, said the deepest scratch was 0.26-inch deep and well within canister’s engineering specifications. But he also said: “Incidental contact was not expected in a vertical insertion system.”
In response to questions submitted to the Monday webinar, Howell said the casks have a 40-year design life.
But “there is ample evidence these would be safe for 50 years and beyond,” Howell said.
A comment emailed to Monday’s webinar criticized the NRC for having only a 40-year design life for the containers and not having a plan in place for dealing with breaches.
Howell said a breach is unlikely. If a breach occurs the contractor would be responsible for coming up with a plan to deal with the incident, with Howell speculating that a damaged canister would be likely put into an overpack.
