Nuclear Waste Storage Plan Gains

The staff of the state’s top coastal agency this week recommended approval of Southern California Edison’s plans to store thousands of spent nuclear fuel rods at San Onofre nuclear power plant, at least until 2050.

Environmentalists say the California Coastal Commission will be approving the creation of a coastal nuclear waste dump just south of the Orange County border, but the agency’s staff says it has no choice under federal law.

“The state of California is preempted from imposing upon nuclear power plant operators any regulatory requirements concerning radiation hazards and nuclear safety,” the staff for the coastal commission emphasized in bold letters in its report.

A federal official said that there was no risk from the closely monitored nuclear waste, and that environmentalists were needlessly sounding alarms.

“There’s a lot of fear among people who really don’t understand the nature of the material,” said Breck Henderson, a spokesman with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “Everyone thinks nuclear waste is 55-gallon drums full of green glob that we’re going to throw in a hole in the ground. They think the drums will rust away and, pretty soon, the water in their tap glows green when it comes out. That’s just not the way it is.”

The plant’s two remaining operating reactors, which provide energy for 2.5 million homes from Santa Barbara to San Diego, are scheduled to be shut down by 2022. A smaller reactor was shut down in 1992. By law, the U.S. Department of Energy must safely dispose of all the site’s fuel rods, which contain spent uranium and will be radioactive for thousands of years.

But no high-level radioactive dump exists yet, and controversial plans for a possible site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada are moving at a snail’s pace. Feasibility studies and other technical evaluations of the remote Nevada site, 237 miles northeast of Los Angeles and 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, have been so delayed that activists worry that temporary storage facilities at San Onofre will become a de facto permanent West Coast repository for nuclear waste.

“Nothing about storing nuclear waste is temporary,” said Mark Massara, the Sierra Club’s coastal programs director. “Without any planning oversight or review, we’re establishing a nuclear waste dump on one of the most heavily visited beaches in all of Southern California.”

Henderson of the nuclear commission conceded that Yucca Mountain is a “political football. I don’t know too many people who expect to start shipping fuel there [soon].”

However, he insisted that the federal government has to take responsibility for the fuel, and it will, eventually. But with a long line of utilities across the country waiting to get rid of nuclear waste, all sides agree there will be nuclear waste at San Onofre for a good half-century.

Spent nuclear fuel is stored in metal containers under water in cooling pools at the plant. They will be wrapped in two layers of steel and moved to reinforced concrete casks, said Ray Golden, spokesman for San Onofre.

This method, known as dry casking, is considered safer than the cooling pools because it requires less maintenance, leaving less room for error, Henderson said.

But activists worry that the casks will be housed next to working reactors, and could be vulnerable to terrorist attack.

Henderson said antinuclear groups often use such scare tactics. He said his agency would never allow on-site storage if it were unsafe. The casks will weigh more than 100 tons, and can withstand shots from antitank weapons.

“You’d have to hug it for a year to get the same radiation” as an X-ray, he said.

State coastal commissioners can’t debate any of these issues.

The commission can study nonnuclear coastal issues, such as impacts on public access, recreation, light and noise. This week, the commission’s staff found that on those grounds, the utility’s plans comply with the Coastal Act. The Commission will vote on the issue Nov. 14 in Los Angeles.

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Finding a Home for Nuclear Waste

The California Coastal Commission staff has recommended approval of a plan to store radioactive waste at the San Onofre nuclear power plant until 2050.

Source: San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station