Idle Reactor to Be Dismantled Early

Owners of the San Onofre nuclear complex are speeding up plans to dismantle a long-mothballed reactor, raising a host of major environmental and safety questions more than a decade before they were expected.

Southern California Edison hopes to begin dismantling San Onofre Unit I as early as next year, 13 years sooner than planned, in part to save money and take advantage of knowledge possessed by longtime workers before they retire. Known as decommissioning, it is an expensive and time-consuming process that means removing the reactor vessel and numerous other radioactive parts and storing them safely.

The nuclear reactor just south of Orange County will take six to eight years to dismantle, at an estimated cost of $460 million. The money has been set aside and no rate increases will be necessary, Edison officials said. The reactor’s two neighbors, the more modern Units II and III, will keep generating electricity until 2013 or later.

News of the impending project signals a new and expensive phase in nuclear plant technology. To date, operators of only 10 nuclear plants nationwide--most of them smaller and less powerful than the 450-megawatt San Onofre reactor--have begun or completed the dismantling process.

Unit I gained fame as California’s oldest commercial nuclear reactor, starting operations in 1967 on a swath of land wedged between Interstate 5 and the Pacific Ocean just south of San Clemente. It was closed in 1992 because it had grown less efficient with time and needed millions of dollars in improvements. But Edison repeatedly has said the unit would not be decommissioned until its two neighboring reactors were shut down.

Now company officials have changed their minds, notifying the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that they hope to begin decommissioning next year.

That decision grew out of several economic issues, plant spokesman Ray Golden said Thursday. As time goes on, the costs of disposing of contaminated parts is expected to grow. “The longer you wait, the higher the cost will be for materials,” he said.

A special decommissioning fee was collected from ratepayers for decades, meaning that Edison now has the money to pay for the work, especially with recent rises in the stock market increasing the value of invested funds, Golden said.

Moreover, Edison is cognizant that its work force is aging, and that the staff members most familiar with the plant will retire in coming years.

“If you waited until 2013,” Golden said, “that knowledge base may erode.”

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a public meeting Thursday at the San Clemente Community Center to outline the new plans, and both federal regulators and Edison officials will answer questions.

Nagging problems facing all nuclear plant operators are the severe lack of storage space for both high-level and low-level nuclear waste nationwide, and questions of how to ship it.

The Unit I reactor vessel weighs several hundred tons and contains so much radioactivity that it can be stored in only one spot in the nation: Barnwell, S.C. It is too heavy for road or train transit, meaning that it either would have to be transported by water or cut into pieces before shipping.

A second facility in Utah can take lower-level waste, Golden said. And if the proposed and controversial Ward Valley site in San Bernardino County is completed in time, Edison might send its waste there.

“We will send it to whatever licensed facility is available at the time,” Golden said.

Environmentalists were caught by surprise at the news of the speeded-up decommissioning schedule.

“If it were a benign facility, you could just lock it up and walk away,” said Melvin L. Nutter, chairman of the League for Coastal Protection. “But that’s not the way it works.”