Lawmakers and scientists gathered at UC San Diego Wednesday to discuss risks and solutions for nuclear waste storage at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.
The plant was shut down in 2013 after a small leak of radioactive steam. Its owner, Southern California Edison, has been dismantling it for the last few years. More than 3.5 million pounds of nuclear waste is still stored there in steel canisters surrounded by concrete.
“This fuel sits just 100 feet from the Pacific Ocean, on an active fault line, near Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, and near San Diego and Los Angeles,” Rep. Mike Levin (D-Oceanside) told Wednesday’s event attendees. “It’s neither the safest nor most effective long-term solution for our spent nuclear fuel.”
The California Department of Public Health reports monthly on radiation levels at the site. Southern California Edison said it closely monitors the safety of the storage containers, along with coastal erosion and sea-level rise.
It’s also advocating for the federal government to remove the waste.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act required the Department of Energy to start accepting nuclear waste from companies like Edison by 1998. That didn’t happen.
Manuel Camargo, Southern California Edison’s principal manager for strategic planning, said utilities sued and won. The United States has paid about $9 billion in damages as of September 2020, according to the Department of Energy.
“As a result, all taxpayers in the U.S., whether you ever received a kilowatt of nuclear power or not, are now having to pay for this on site storage that we're doing that you never should have had to implement,” Camargo said.
Last June, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the department had begun looking for communities to temporarily store nuclear waste from dozens of plants across the country. The Obama administration abandoned plans for a permanent storage site at Yucca Mountain.
“There's international consensus among engineers on how to store spent nuclear fuel and dispose of spent nuclear fuel,” Camargo said. “The real challenge is a sociopolitical one and basically where to store the spent nuclear fuel.”
On Wednesday, Irvine Vice Mayor Larry Agran suggested moving San Onofre’s nuclear waste to the other side of the I-5 at Camp Pendleton. The Marine Corps has said that's up to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Camargo said, if sea level rise necessitated it, Edison could move the spent fuel to higher ground on the plant’s property. That would likely be where the containment domes are now, which are set to be removed in the next few years.
Republican State Assemblymember Laurie Davies, who represents Oceanside, Camp Pendleton and other nearby communities, is asking state lawmakers to pass a resolution urging the federal government to “prioritize fulfilling the federal government’s legal and contractual obligation” to move the nuclear waste.
“This resolution is not here to debate the merits of nuclear energy,” she told the Assembly’s energy committee earlier this month. “It is simply a tool to show the federal government that the world’s fifth largest economy is ready for them to start acting and do the job that they have been neglecting for over two decades.”
Davies co-authored the resolution with State Sen. Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat who represents Encinitas. It left the Assembly’s energy committee earlier this month. The full Assembly can take it up for a vote when the legislative session resumes next month.
“The state of California is a huge entity,” Agran said in an interview during Wednesday’s symposium. “If the state of California became an advocate for the safety of the people of the state of California, an advocate at the federal level, things would start to happen.”
