SoCal Edison To Start Dismantling San Onofre Power Plant
Speaker 1: 00:00 Southern California Edison will proceed with plans to dismantle the San Onofre nuclear generating station. This comes after the California coastal commission approved the plans last week. Edison official said the complete dismantlement will take eight to 10 years in efforts will likely start late this year or early next. But as the San Diego union Tribune, Rob Nikolsky reports, the move is being met with opposition. Rob, welcome. Hi, how are you? I cannot complain but I as I understand quite a few people can hear. Speaker 2: 00:30 Yes. A, they had the meeting last week and there were a number of people who, one of the coastal commission, the California coastal commission to either deny or postpone the permit so that Southern California Edison can commence eventually dismantling what's left of the nuclear power plant there. Speaker 1: 00:49 And, and let's get a little background here. So, so when was Santa no afraid decommissioned and why? Speaker 2: 00:55 It was decommissioned, I think it was 2013 it was because there was a steam generator problem there and it leaked a little bit of radiation and they shut the plant down at about six months later they decided to decommission the plant. And since that point they've, I've been basically tearing down the plant. But now with this permit, there'll be able to take down the big structures, including the most notable feature. When you drive by [inaudible], you see on the left, on the or of you're heading North or you see it on the left, you'll see the, uh, the big cooling towers, units two and three, those are 200 feet tall and they're going to be dismantled and about five or six years, wow. And remind us of where this spent nuclear fuel is being stored. It's going from what storage? They're transferring it over to a dry storage facility that they just recently constructed about a year ago. Speaker 2: 01:47 Uh, all together there'll be 73 canisters that are going to be moved from what storage where they've been cooled and they're going to move them. They, and they move them on these, these large contraptions that move about three miles an hour. They move very carefully. If there's any sense of that there's an earthquake coming or something like that or any kind of trembling that they stop but they move them from the wet storage to this brand new dry storage facility. So, so we have a non-working nuclear power plant with nuclear fuel stored nearby. So what exactly did the coastal commission improve then? Last week they approved the dismantling of the structures and eventually the plan is that you remediate this site and give it back to the Navy cause that's as people can recall that the actual site of the power plant belongs to the U S Navy. It's in camp Pendleton. Speaker 2: 02:42 And what about the pools where nuclear fuel is cooled? Can Edison remove them? Yes they can. The nuclear regulatory commission does not require the licensee to keep spent fuel in what they call wet storage, which is East pools, which they take the thermally hot nuclear fuel and cool it for about five years. And that was really one of the big arguments that the people who wanted to have the permit denied, were arguing for, were saying we should keep the spent fuel pools there. As long as there is our canisters there, you should keep the spent fuel pools there. Now, Southern California Edison has come back and said that their argument is that it's better to knock down the pools. And if there's a problem with one of the canisters, it's better to do that too, to not have the pools. Because if you move, if you keep the pool fair, they say there's more risk in terms of increased radiation dose to workers. There's also potential radiation releases or damage to the fuel rods if you're moving them back into wet storage. Speaker 1: 03:44 And this, the process itself will take between eight and 10 years. Speaker 2: 03:49 Um, why will it have the dismantlement exactly for the dismantlement, why will it take so long? Well, because there's a lot of stuff there and, and also you're still transferring the spent fuel from wet storage to dry swords that they expect that to get done in about by middle of next summer. They've got 38 more transfers to do. So it's going to take some time and eventually if and when that glorious day comes and we've got a national repository just to have the nuclear fuel go-to, that entire 84 acre chunk will return back to the Navy and people can still be able to go out to the beach and instead of seeing a dry storage facility and a seawall and a switch yard, it might be able to be reverted back to its natural site and there was some loud Speaker 1: 04:39 objections to dismantling the plant during the session. Who objected and why? Speaker 2: 04:43 Well, they were a lot of objections mostly to knocking down the spent fuel pools. People, a lot of people believe that as long as the canisters are there, you should keep the spent fuel pools present. If there's a problem, if you want to inspect the canisters or if you think that there might be something wrong with the fuel inside the canisters, you can go back and put them into a what storage facility and inspect them again Speaker 1: 05:09 in many of the commissioners weren't happy about the entire situation either. Tell us what their problems are. Speaker 2: 05:14 Their main problem was the fact that the federal government hasn't gotten off the dime on this and that the fact that until we find a national repository, you're going to have to have spent fuel staying at Santa. No fray. Speaker 1: 05:28 Hmm. Well, this is something I know you'll continue to follow for a very long time. I've been speaking with Rob Nikolsky energy reporter with the San Diego union Tribune. Rob, thank you very much. Thank you.
