Coastal Panel Approves Plan to Dismantle 1 San Onofre Reactor

Despite concerns about storage of radioactive waste, San Onofre power plant officials won final approval Tuesday to begin dismantling one of their three nuclear reactors just south of San Clemente--a massive job expected to take at least six years and cost $460 million.

California Coastal Commission members meeting in San Diego unanimously granted permission for the work, clearing the final hurdle for plant operator Southern California Edison Co., which already has approval from state and federal regulators.

Fewer than a dozen nuclear plants in the nation have been decommissioned. The work at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station will be especially daunting because of its size; the plant’s three units make up the largest nuclear power plant in the state and the second largest in the country.

Unit I, which started creating energy in 1968 and was shut down in 1992, sits beside two working nuclear reactors--a concern to activists who say they have yet to receive any information on decommissioning plans.

Plant spokesman Ray Golden said public meetings have been held. Also, he said, the expertise developed by plant operators over 30 years and the knowledge of federal regulators “should be sufficient to meet the public’s needs.”

At Tuesday’s hearing, several environmental activists also objected to plans for storing radioactive material near the site of the reactor for at least a decade.

“One of the most egregious threats to the public trust . . . is the de facto creation of a coast nuclear waste dump,” said Mark Massara, a Sierra Club attorney.

Many on the commission agreed but said they have no jurisdiction over storage of nuclear waste. Such matters are controlled by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

“I don’t think there’s anyone up here who feels safe with leaving this to the NRC,” said Coastal Commission Chairwoman Sara Wan.

Breck Henderson, an NRC spokesman, said activists are sounding the alarm needlessly. “It’s not terribly dangerous,” he said. “There really isn’t much that can happen.”

Golden said safety is the primary reason for the timing of work on Unit I. Officials once planned to start taking all three reactors apart in 2013, but decided to begin earlier because the current work force, which is intimately familiar with the unit’s operation, is approaching retirement age, he said.

More than $460 million has been set aside for the decommissioning from fees collected from ratepayers for years, Golden said. The 450-megawatt Unit I served about 500,000 homes and businesses.

Preliminary efforts, such as removing office furniture, have begun. Major work could start within a month.

The Unit I reactor vessel can only be disposed of in Barnwell, S.C. Weighing several hundred tons, it is too heavy for road travel so will be shipped by rail to Oceanside and then by barge to South Carolina.

The spent nuclear fuel will remain at San Onofre for at least a decade. By law, the U.S. Department of Energy must safely dispose of the metal rods that contain spent uranium. No disposal facility for this material exists, though federal officials are studying a possible site in Nevada. The rods, which are currently stored in pools of water, will be placed in steel-reinforced concrete containers and kept at San Onofre until at least 2010.