Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
2/27/2015
Southern California Edison is seeking an amendment from the California Coastal Commission to expand its used nuclear fuel dry cask storage area at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), the company announced this week. SONGS’ current Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation currently holds 51 canisters. The company anticipates adding an additional 80 canisters by 2019 to its dry storage area as part of its spent fuel management plan, and it needs an amendment to its Coastal Development Permit to move forward. “Local community leaders and a wide range of stakeholders in California have told us they want San Onofre’s used nuclear fuel moved to dry storage as expeditiously as possible,” SCE Vice President of Decommissioning Chris Thompson said in a statement. “We want to be responsive to that preference while continuing to safely manage this fuel until the federal government does its job and opens a used nuclear fuel repository.”
SCE has selected Holtec International’s underground dry cask storage system to store its spent nuclear fuel. According to its Spent Fuel Management document submitted to the NRC last September, SONGS plans to complete the spent fuel transfer by 2019. SCE’s strategy included an anticipated date of spent fuel pick up by the Department of Energy in 2050, but SCE has admitted that date is dependent on movement on DOE’s part. The other decommissioning documents submitted to the NRC outline the estimated costs and planned timeline for the cleanup, with a price tag of approximately $4.4 billion and a start date for major decommissioning activities to begin in 2016.
