By John Stang
A watchdog organization on Monday asked a state court in California to halt the transfer of used reactor fuel at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) and to make majority owner Southern California Edison prove it is on track to move the radioactive waste to an off-site location.
The San Diego County Superior Court set a Nov. 1 hearing on the motion from Citizens’ Oversight and local resident Patricia Borchmann. The filing is an outgrowth of the 2017 settlement to a 2015 lawsuit on used fuel storage at SONGS.
Southern California Edison “has and is engaging in conscious and deliberate acts which, if continued unabated, will unfairly frustrate the agreed common purposes of SCE’s Settlement Agreement to move 3.8 million pounds of irradiated nuclear fuel from the San Onofre Nuclear Power Station and beach in San Diego to a safer, inland location,” according to the motion to enforce the settlement agreement from plaintiffs’ attorney Michael Aguirre.
The motion requests a temporary halt to fuel movement at SONGS, with El Cajon-based Citizens Oversight entitled to “discovery to determine whether SCE is making commercially reasonable efforts to relocate the waste to a safer (off-site) location.”
In 2015, Citizens’ Oversight and Borchmann sued SCE and the California Coastal Commission after the state panel approved expansion of the dry-storage facility to accept spent fuel from reactor Units 2 and 3 at the San Diego County facility. The reactors had been permanently retired in 2013 and their fuel placed in cooling pools. Used fuel from Unit 1, which closed in 1992, was already on the storage pad.
The 2015 lawsuit alleged the dry storage facility, close to the Pacific Ocean and barely above sea level in a seismically active region, faces danger from rising seas flooding the dry storage site and earthquakes cracking the storage site’s concrete to create potential radioactive leaks.
Southern California Edison has countered that the dry storage site has been engineered — with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s stamp of approval — to withstand earthquakes. The company also hopes to begin moving spent fuel from SONGS to the inland United States in a few years.
The 2017 settlement agreement calls for SCE to make “commercially reasonable” efforts to move the fuel away from SONGS and to hire independent experts to determine where the fuel could go. The utility in June awarded a contract to infrastructure and environmental services specialist North Wind Inc. to begin work on the plan to move the fuel off-site: “Getting SONGS spent nuclear fuel off site is a top priority for SCE, as is safely managing the fuel while it is on site.”
As of this week, contractor Holtec International has moved 35 canisters of used fuel from the two reactors into dry storage, with 38 remaining to be moved. The process, halted for nearly a year following an August 2018 mishap in which one canister was at risk of an 18-foot drop, is expected to be completed next spring. At that point the storage pad will hold about 3.5 million pounds of used fuel assemblies from SONGS’ three reactors.
The most likely future destinations for that waste are proposed interim consolidated fuel storage sites in New Mexico and West Texas that could open early in the next decade if they obtain approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The plaintiffs’ motion Monday argues that SCE has not made progress in achieving the goals of that settlement agreement.
“Since entering into the Settlement Agreement, it has been revealed SCE has engaged in a pattern of dangerous practices that will likely compromise, if not make it impossible, to transfer the spent nuclear fuel to an off-site storage facility as required by the settlement agreement” according to the motion.
Citizens’ Oversight specifically cited issues including insufficient training for SCE personnel in moving the 50-ton fuel canisters from wet to dry storage; employing canister designs not approved by the NRC, an apparent reference to a change in the design of the Holtec vessels that had not been reviewed by the regulator; scraping and scratching of the canisters as they are placed into storage; and lack of transparency about the 2018 mishap.
The NRC fined SCE $16,000 for the incident due to the loss of safety features and a failure to report the incident within 24 hours.
Citizens’ Oversight worries that the walls of the canisters are not a thick as they should be, with the abrasions being the first signs that cracks could appear in the casks as they are jostled while being moved. Southern California Edison and its regulator say that minor scratching on the canisters does not signify a more significant problem.
A number of communities near the plant have passed resolutions pressing for a halt to the used fuel offload until safety measures can be improved, The Coast News reported Thursday.
Southern California Edison has emphasized the safety measure taken since the 2018 event, including additional training for personnel and increased oversight of the fuel work. In a statement this week, the utility said: “Southern California Edison continues to implement its obligations under the Settlement Agreement in good faith and provides periodic reports on its progress. These reports are published on the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) website.”
SONGS’ dry storage systems meet all applicable safety and regulatory requirements, SCE said. “Getting SONGS spent nuclear fuel off site is a top priority for SCE, as is safely managing the fuel while it is on site,” the statement said.
The revival of the 2015 lawsuit raises many of the same issues featured in a lawsuit recently filed in federal court by another advocacy group, Public Watchdogs, against SCE; plant co-owner San Diego Gas & Electric Co., along with its parent corporation, Sempra Energy; and Holtec International.
Public Watchdogs’ litigation is seeking to stop the movement of fuel from wet to dry storage while SONGS’ overall decommissioning plan is analyzed to see if it can be improved.
Major decommissioning operations could begin later this year, pending final state regulatory approval from the Coastal Commission. The panel is scheduled next Thursday to consider a coastal development permit for on-shore decommissioning. An AECOM-EnergySolutions partnership will manage the $4.4 billion project, which is scheduled for completion by 2028.
