The Community Engagement Panel for the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in California will at its May 11 meeting discuss opportunities for sending the plant’s waste to other locations.
The question of what to do with SONGS’ waste is already the focus of one lawsuit against the state (now in settlement talks) and much community concern (most recently from San Clemente).
The San Diego-area nuclear power plant permanently closed in 2013 due to problems with faulty steam generators, and majority owner Southern California Edison in October 2015 secured approval from the California Coastal Commission to expand the site’s spent fuel storage pad to hold another 75 concrete-encased steel canisters in underground storage – enough for 3.6 million pounds of nuclear waste at SONGS. The storage pad already holds 51 canisters above ground but is near capacity.
Locals worry about the potential dangers of placing the radioactive spent fuel 100 feet from the Pacific Ocean, urging Southern California Edison to look to the Mojave Desert or elsewhere for storage.
Full details of the upcoming discussion of off-site storage of SONGS’ used fuel were not immediately available, but a Community Engagement Panel press release indicated the focus would be on the status of planned interim nuclear waste sites facilities in Texas and New Mexico.
The sites would hold more than 75,000 metric tons of spent fuel from SONGS and other U.S. nuclear plants until the Department of Energy meets its legal obligation to build a permanent repository for the material – likely decades from now. Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists last month asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to temporarily suspend review of the company’s license application for its planned 40,000-metric-ton capacity facility in West Texas. The regulator meanwhile is in the middle of its acceptance review of the license application for New Jersey-based Holtec International’s proposed facility in southeastern New Mexico for 120,000 metric tons of waste.
Even presuming NRC approval, neither storage site is likely to be ready to start taking waste until early in the next decade.
Community Engagement Panel Chairman David Victor said Thursday the upcoming meeting would also discuss aging management – monitoring and stewardship of SONGS’ stainless-steel storage canisters and overpacks of time.
Speakers are expected to include two NRC representatives, who will discuss federal oversight of SONGS’ decommissioning; Southern California Edison Chief Nuclear Officer Tom Palmisano will discuss decommissioning preparations.
Southern California Edison in December picked an AECOM-EnergySolutions partnership as its general contractor for decommissioning the plant, which is expected to cost $4.4 billion.
Michael Aguirre, an attorney representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against SONGS’ current waste storage plan, said there is still a distinct lack of leadership to tackle the many issues related to transportation, storage, and long-term monitoring of the waste from SONGS and scores of other nuclear plants around the nation.
“We have nowhere to put it, no one is taking leadership,” said Aguirre, who said he could not discuss details of the settlement talks.
While much of the worry around coastal storage of SONGS’ spent fuel has focused on the impact of a natural event such as an earthquake or tsunami, Aguirre on Thursday posited a new threat: North Korea. “They don’t need a warhead, they just need a missile and put it into San Onofre.”
The belligerent regime in Pyongyang has for years been developing its nuclear-weapon and ballistic missile capabilities, in fits and starts. The North does not yet have the capacity to land a missile on the United States (its most recent test last weekend was a failure), but its efforts are an ever-growing concern.
Edison Reports Revenue Increase for 1Q
Meanwhile, SCE parent company Edison International on Monday reported net income of $362 million, or $1.11 per share, for the first quarter of 2017, a notable step up from $281 million, or $0.86 per share, in the same period for 2016.
Southern California Edison’s first-quarter 2017 net income increased by $54 million from the same span in 2016, from $295 million to $349 million.
Edison in its earnings report Monday said the revenue SCE increase developed from an “escalation mechanism set forth in the 2015 General Rate Case decision, lower operation and maintenance expenses and higher income tax benefits partially offset by higher net financing costs to finance SCE’s capital spending program.”
“Edison International is off to a solid start in 2017,” President and CEO Pedro Pizarro said in a statement. “It is early in the year, so for now we have left our full year guidance unchanged. Our normal practice is to wait until more of the year has gone by before formally updating guidance. At the same time, we recognize there is a bias toward the upper half of the range.”
