Plant Can Store Nuclear Waste

The California Coastal Commission reluctantly agreed Tuesday to allow nuclear waste to be stored at the San Onofre power plant just south of San Clemente for 20 years.

The federal government’s inability to find a permanent repository for used nuclear fuel makes the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station one of a growing number of nuclear power plants facing the issue of what to do with their spent uranium rods, which will be radioactive for thousands of years.

The commission voted unanimously to approve construction of a new, permanent facility to hold the waste, despite pleas from concerned area residents and numerous environmental groups. They attached several conditions to the permit, including requiring Southern California Edison, owner of the plant, to provide an upfront guarantee that they could afford lifetime monitoring of the waste.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to sign off on the project, and construction would start by 2006 at the latest. “I understand the public’s concerns about nuclear safety issues, and I may be in sympathy with them,” said Sara Wan, commission chair. “But this commission’s jurisdiction is limited.”

The state agency is precluded by federal law from ruling on issues of nuclear safety, but its approval was still needed for the construction of facilities to store the waste.

Environmentalists were angered by the vote, which they say allows the creation of a “coastal nuclear waste dump” that threatens the safety of nearby residents.

“It is extremely disturbing when the agency the state of California has created to protect the coastal environment actually locates a nuclear waste storage facility adjacent to the beach,” said activist Norbert Dall.

The Coalition for Responsible and Ethical Environmental Decisions and local chapters of the League of Women Voters, the American Assn. of University Women, the Surfrider Foundation and the Sierra Club all objected. They urged the state panel to put off a vote until the Nuclear Regulatory Commission conducted a thorough study of storing “lethal” fuel rods at San Onofre, and a review of alternate sites.

But Southern California Edison officials said the new method of storage would be safer than temporary cooling ponds currently in use at the site. They said the plant will run out of room in the cooling pools in 2007, and if there is no place to put used fuel, the plant would have to stop operating.

Jim Reilly, director of decommissioning at San Onofre, said the new storage tombs would pose no threat.

“You could stand there for a year, 24 hours a day, on the beach, and get the same exposure as a chest X-ray.”

San Onofre has two nuclear reactors that provide energy for 2.2 million homes from Santa Barbara to San Diego, which are licensed until 2022. One of these reactors is currently offline because it is being repaired after a February fire. A third smaller reactor was shut in 1992. The plant is just south of the Orange County border.

Plant officials want to wrap the waste in two layers of steel and move it into reinforced concrete casks. This storage method is considered safer than the cooling pools, because it requires less maintenance and is less susceptible to accidents caused by human error. The rods must first spend five years in cooling pools to become safe enough to move to the casks.

By law, the U.S. Department of Energy is required to dispose of all the site’s fuel rods--which contain partly spent uranium that will nonetheless remain dangerously radioactive for thousands of years. The department has promised to start accepting used fuel by 2010, but no dump for high-level radioactive waste has yet been built in the country.

Controversial plans for a nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada have been delayed so long that activists and state officials alike worry storage facilities like the one planned at San Onofre will become permanent repositories of nuclear waste.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen with the storage site. It’s a national issue of the utmost urgency as radioactive [fuel] accumulates,” said commission executive director Peter Douglas.

Concerned by the federal delays, the commissioners added a condition to their approval limiting storage to 20 years.

Southern California Edison and federal regulatory officials have said that storage might need to stretch until 2050.

Commissioner Shirley Dettloff noted that when the power plant was approved in the early 1970s, state officials were “assured that there would be storage space and we would not be in the position we are in today.”

She worried that the 20-year term would stretch into the “indefinite future.”

Others agreed.

“The federal government has a responsibility to find long-term storage for spent fuel,” said Commissioner Cecilia Estolano. “We shouldn’t be encouraging the federal government to not meet that responsibility.”

The commission also required Southern California Edison to provide a bond or other funding mechanism to ensure the ailing utility has money available for long-term monitoring.

The utility will be required to seek additional approval from the commission if it wants to expand the site to take waste from other nuclear power plants. Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials at the meeting said they wouldn’t object if other power plants wanted to store radioactive waste at the San Onofre site, as long as it is stored safely. But Edison officials insisted that only San Onofre waste will be stored there.

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A 20-Year Lease for Nuclear Waste

The California Coastal Commission approved a plan Tuesday to store radioactive waste at San Onofre nuclear power plant for 20 years.

Source: San Onfre Nuclear Generating Station