By John Stang
Infrastructure and environmental services specialist North Wind Inc. expects to have a strategic plan ready by December 2020 on how to move used nuclear fuel off-site from the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in California.
Idaho Falls, Idaho-based North Wind was contracted in June by SONGS majority owner Southern California Edison to prepare the plan. On Thursday, it briefed the SONGS Community Engagement Panel on the status of the work.
Company officials, led by team leader Phillip Neidzielski-Eichner, told the panel the plan will address who would ship the fuel to a proposed interim storage site in New Mexico or West Texas — each expected to open in the first half of the 2020s if they are licensed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Or the 3.5 million pounds of spent fuel assemblies could be sent directly to a planned permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., which has been stalled since 2010 and likely will take decades to complete if it ever receives money from Congress.
North Wind’s plan would also tackle the conditions of transferring ownership of the fuel to the shipper, which could be the federal government or a private company. North Wind will also look at Southern California Edison’s preparations that will be necessary to ship the fuel. The plan will further consider whether the fuel would be transported by truck or rail, as well as the time frame and commercial arrangements for that transportation.
Development of the strategic plan was one aspect of Southern California Edison’s commitments to settle a lawsuit filed by a local watchdog group against the expansion of SONGS’ dry-storage pad for spent fuel. The 2017 enabled the company to proceed with the expansion and eventual transfer of used fuel from wet storage, but requires SCE to take “commercially reasonable” efforts to find an off-site home for the radioactive material. SONGS is on U.S. Navy-owned land at the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.
Right now, Southern California Edison and contractor Holtec International are moving the fuel from Reactors 2 and 3 at the retired San Diego County power plant to the on-site dry storage installation. Forty of 73 canisters have been moved to date, with work on the 41st vessel beginning Thursday. The full offload is expected to be finished by mid-2020.
Southern California Edison permanently shut down Units 2 and 3 in 2013 after faulty steam generators were installed in both reactors. Reactor 1 was retired in 1992 and has been largely decommissioned, with its used fuel already in dry storage.
The utility hired Holtec in 2014 to manage the transfer of the remaining fuel. There have been several problems with the project since then, notably an August 2018 mishap in which one canister was left at risk of a nearly 20-foot drop into its storage space. Southern California Edison and Holtec halted work for nearly a year while they made a number of fixes, including improved fuel-transfer procedures, oversight, training, and practicing — plus adding cameras and load-monitoring gauges. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission also investigated the incident, eventually fining SCE $116,000 for violations of federal nuclear safety regulations.
The fuel offload resumed in July and is proceeding with little trouble, according to Doug Bauder, SCE vice president for decommissioning and chief nuclear officer. Problems have been quickly identified and fixed, he said. These included one instance in which faulty height and speed sensors had to be fixed on the transportation and loading equipment prior to moving one canister. Holtec also resolved potential trouble with works breathing diesel exhaust fumes from the machinery used to move he canisters, Bauder said. The exhaust system was moved on the machinery to fix the problem.
“I am pleased to see the continuing emphasis on safety over the schedule,” Bauder told the Community Engagement Panel.
Meanwhile, SCE is testing three radiation monitors installed around the on-site fuel storage facility. Those monitors are supposed to send real-time radiation data — a measure to detect potential canister leaks — to the California Department of Public Health. This system is supposed to be online in January.
Roughly 20 people spoke during the public hearing portion of the Community Engagement Panel meeting at Oceanside, Calif.— almost all critical of SCE and Holtec. The complaints echoed criticisms raised during public meetings in the past several months.
The most consistent complaint was regarding use of thin-walled canisters to hold the spent fuel, along with the potential danger of rising sea levels due to climate change flooding the onsite storage facility before the fuel can be moved elsewhere.
About a dozen people argued that the walls of the canisters are not as thick as they should be, resulting in scratches and abrasions showing up as the first signs that cracks could appear in the casks as they are jostled while being moved.
The abrasions came from scrapes in moving the canisters and from inserting them into the vertical slots at the dry storage pad. The walls of the current canisters are five-eighths of an inch thick; the critics want SONGS to use casks with walls that are several feet thick.
“Edison lacks procedures to deal with corrosion cracking the canisters,” said area resident Torgan Johnson
However, Bauder countered the abrasions have been analyzed and do not pose a danger of cracking – a conclusion supported by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He contended the current thin-walled canisters are safe. “We’ll fully legal. We’re fully compliant (with federal regulations),” Bauder said.
Southern California Edison is also gearing up for the beginning of major decommissioning of SONGS after receiving the final necessary state regulatory approval in October. The utility in 2016 hired SONGS Decommissioning Solutions, a joint venture of AECOM and EnergySolutions, as the general contractor for the $4.4 billion project.
Operations to date have been limited to preparatory work. Full decommissioning is expected to begin in January or February 2020, with a target completion of date of 2028. It will involve dismantling the reactors vessel, tearing down buildings, removing large equipment, and hauling away contaminated and non-contaminated debris.
At the meeting, Southern California Edison officials also discussed plans to discharge wastewater— sewage and operational byproducts that are greatly diluted — through the reactor Unit 2 conduit pipe into the Pacific Ocean. The utility has long had the appropriate permits to do this. This type of discharge decreased dramatically since the plant closed in 2013. However, a new discharge is scheduled for mid-December, to be followed by a few in the first quarter of 2020.
The initial releases will be approximately 20,000 to 25,000 gallons in volume and will last 10 to 12 hours. The utility will inform the public 48 hours prior to each discharge, said spokesman John Dobken.
