A group of surfers wearing hazardous materials protection outfits were scheduled Friday afternoon to protest expansion of nuclear waste storage at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California. The protest is scheduled for 1 p.m. local time at the San Diego Superior Court Hall of Justice, according to a press announcement from the nongovernmental group Public Watchdogs.
The release says “75 surfers, mermaids, musicians and concerned citizens dressed in yellow HazMat Gear” would call attention to plans by plant majority owner Southern California Edison’s to move another 3,600 pounds of spent nuclear fuel to a storage facility about 100 feet from the Pacific Ocean.
“This event is in support of nuclear safety and sanity,” according to Public Watchdogs. “We are asking for peaceful, conscious, responsible citizens to attend and support a positive solution to our deadly nuclear waste problems at San Onofre. It is vital that the issue of nuclear safety remain in the public eye through constant and continuous public attention.”
SONGS permanently shut down in 2013. The California Coastal Commission in October 2015 authorized expanding the plant’s’ used fuel storage pad to accommodate 75 or so additional concrete-enscased steel canisters of waste. The facility already holds 51 canisters above ground but is near capacity.
The state approval within weeks drew a lawsuit from Citizens Oversight and area resident Patricia Borchmann seeking to block the project and send the waste elsewhere. The sides last week agreed to settlement talks in the lawsuit.
Power provider Entergy on Sunday said it has begun the final refueling of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, just over two years before the Massachusetts facility closes for good.
Workers began to power down the 45-year-old plant ahead of what will be its 21st and last refueling, according to a press statement. The utility expects to spend $54 million on the process, which will include hiring over 800 temporary workers to support the 620 full-time staff in checking, swapping out, and upgrading hundreds of parts at the facility near Plymouth.
Entergy said the schedule for resuming power production from Pilgrim “is business information that can’t be shared.”
Pilgrim is scheduled to close on May 31, 2019. Local activists have demanded it be closed earlier, noting the series of operational failures and unplanned shutdowns dating to 2013 that led the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to in 2015 place the plant on Column 4 of the agency’s Action Matrix, which is the lowest rating for an operating nuclear reactor.
Cape Downwinders, a group representing residents from Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket, rallied Sunday outside Pilgrim to protest the plant’s refueling.
