Shipment of Reactor Gets Federal OK

Federal officials gave final approval Tuesday to a plan to transport a decommissioned reactor from the San Onofre nuclear power plant to a disposal site in South Carolina, a plodding 11,000-mile journey around the tip of South America

The first 17 miles of the spent reactor’s trip alone are expect to take up to seven days, as the 770-ton unit is pulled slowly down the coast to a barge.

Southern California Edison, the primary operator of the power plant, received the transit permit from the U.S. Department of Transportation, said Edison spokesman Ray Golden. It marked a final regulatory hurdle in the problem-plagued effort to get clearance to dispose of the old reactor.

Edison will begin transporting the reactor as early as this month but no later than March, Golden said. The trip to the disposal site at Barnwell, S.C., will take about 90 days, he said. The decommissioned reactor will be transported intact, encased in steel and concrete, Golden said.

The danger of radiation exposure is minimal, he said.

“If you were to straddle the container encasing the reactor for an hour, you would get the equivalent exposure from an X-ray,” Golden said. “If you stand 8 feet away, you won’t get any exposure at all.”

Planning for the long trip began in June 1999, when Edison started dismantling the reactor. But disposal plans hit several snags, including Panama’s refusal to use its canal.

The cost of decommissioning and disposing of the reactor is estimated at $600 million.

Disposal plans call for lifting the unit aboard a 192-wheel, 16-axle flatbed truck that will carry it from the plant to a boat basin at Camp Pendleton, where it will be loaded onto a barge and towed to South Carolina.

The flatbed truck will move no faster than 2 mph. The vehicle will travel south on the frontage road that used to be Highway 101, through San Onofre State Beach, to Camp Pendleton. Just north of Las Pulgas Road, the reactor will have to be diverted to southbound Interstate 5.

Golden said the two right lanes will be closed for about a quarter of a mile to Las Pulgas Road, where the truck will exit and take a route parallel to the coast to the boat basin and a barge. The barge is 200 feet long by 50 feet wide and built specifically to transport nuclear reactors, he said.

Security will be provided by state park rangers, the California Highway Patrol and private security guards. Marines will provide security on Camp Pendleton.

Edison declined to discuss security arrangements once the barge is on the open seas.

However, terrorism is not a huge concern for officials. The spent nuclear fuel from the reactor was removed in 1993, and the inside of the container was filled with tons of concrete.