Southern California Edison has about 110 employees remaining at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) following the latest round of layoffs earlier this month, according to a senior site official.
The utility transitioned the retired power plant in San Diego County to an independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI)-only property on Aug. 10, SONGS Plant Manager Lou Bosch said the following day during an online conference hosted by the American Nuclear Society.
The day ended with the scheduled layoffs of about 150 Southern California Edison (SCE) employees, Bosch said.
SONGS had roughly 1,500 workers at the time of its permanent closure in 2013, after faulty steam generators were installed in two remaining operating reactors. From that point, SCE has reduced staffing at several points as it has shifted from operations to oversight of the facility, spokesman John Dobken said Tuesday.
“As we neared completion of fuel transfer operations, we began planning a reduction in force that reflects our next transition, to an organization solely focused on safely managing the dry cask storage system and decommissioning oversight,” he wrote in response to questions from Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. “Employees at San Onofre were well aware of these upcoming changes.”
Impacted departments included operations, engineering, security, and support services, Dobken stated.
On Aug. 7, contractor Holtec International completed the transfer of 73 canisters of used fuel from reactor Units 2 and 3 to the expanded ISFSI on the property. The storage pad now holds about 3.5 million pounds of spent fuel rods from the site’s three reactors.
The Aug. 10 transition to the ISFSI-only status “essentially means the nuclear focus is reduced to the ISFSI where the spent nuclear fuel is stored,” according to Dobken. “The majority of San Onofre becomes an industrial deconstruction site, with critical functions, including oversight, focused on the safe dismantlement of plant structures. Resources such as security are re-focused on the dry storage facility and protection of the spent nuclear fuel.”
