More than half of San Onofre’s nuclear waste now in dry storage - OCRegister

More than half of the nuclear waste from reactors 2 and 3 at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is now in dry storage.

Since fuel transfers resumed in July, more than 400 spent fuel assemblies have been moved from the cooling pools to the Holtec HI-STORM dry storage system, according to data from Southern California Edison.

Another 1,100 fuel assemblies remain in the reactors’ cooling pools. They’re scheduled to be out of the pools and into the Holtec system next year. Once that wet-to-dry transfer is complete, the $4.4 billion tear-down of the shuttered power plant can begin in earnest.

• Loading spent fuel into the Holtec dry storage system at sunset. (Courtesy Southern California Edison)

• A detail of a display of a nuclear fuel assembly shows the rods, with some missing, at the decommissioned San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Clemente, CA. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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• A spent fuel pool at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station near San Clemente, Calif. (Courtesy Nuclear Regulatory Commission)

• Southern California Edison’s Media Relations Manager, John Dobken, shows simulated nuclear fuel pellets like the ones stored inside canisters at San Onofre’s dry fuel storage facility. Holtec canisters contain three million spent fuel pellets. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

• This Google Earth image shows how close the expanded dry storage area for spent nuclear waste will be to the shoreline at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. (Image courtesy of Google Earth)

• Workers at San Onofre’s dry fuel storage facility ready a newly placed canister for its 35,000 pound closure lid. The canister is placed inside the yellow shield cask as it is moved from the fuel handling building to the storage facility. Once in position, the canister is lowered 20 feet into a steel enclosure surrounded by concrete. There will be 123 canisters of spent fuel stored at San Onofre. The process should be completed by next spring.(Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

• A worker at San Onofre’s independent spent fuel storage facility removes rigging after successfully downloading a canister 20 feet into a steel enclosure surrounded by concrete. There will be 123 canisters of spent fuel stored at San Onofre. The process should be completed by next spring. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

• Workers at San Onofre’s dry fuel storage facility ready a newly placed canister for its 35,000-pound closure lid. The canister is placed inside the yellow shield cask as it is moved from the fuel handling building to the storage facility. Once in position, the canister is lowered 20 feet into a steel enclosure surrounded by concrete. There will be 123 canisters of spent fuel stored at San Onofre. The process should be completed by next spring.(Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

• A worker at San Onofre’s independent spent fuel storage facility removes rigging after successfully downloading a canister 20 feet into a steel enclosure surrounded by concrete. There will be 123 canisters of spent fuel stored at San Onofre. The process should be completed by next spring. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

• In 2017, Bridget Bartlow holds a sign during a protest at the Huntington Beach pier against nuclear waste storage at the San Onofre nuclear power plant. (Photo by Bill Alkofer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

• A “hazmat surfer” was one of dozens of protesters angry about the plan to bury nuclear waste from the now closed San Onofre plant at San Onofre. They held a rally and a march through downtown San Clemente on Saturday, Dec 30, 2017.(Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

• The Holtec Hi-Storm Umax dry storage system for spent fuel at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. (Courtesy Southern California Edison)

• Workers practice loading a canister into the Holtec dry storage system at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

• A detail of a display of a nuclear fuel assembly shows the rods and pellets that were used in the decommissioned San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Clemente, CA. Officials gave a media tour on Monday, March 18, 2019. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)

By the numbers

When fuel transfers came to a screeching halt at San Onofre in August 2018 — after the near-drop of a 50-ton canister — the Holtec system held 29 dry waste canisters. Since loading resumed in July, another 14 canisters have been added, for a total of 43, Edison said.

Thirty more canisters will be loaded before San Onofre’s spent fuel pools are empty. Each canister holds 37 spent fuel assemblies. And each assembly consists of hundreds of fuel rods.

Edison and Holtec are loading one canister into dry storage every two weeks or so — a process that officials say has proceeded with little drama since they revamped procedures in the aftermath of the near-miss.

“My impression is that this pace is slower compared to the original expectation of a few years ago. But much more deliberate and careful — more breaks and more efforts to learn and improve— which is what matters most,” said David Victor, an international law professor at UC San Diego and chairman of San Onofre’s volunteer Community Engagement Panel.

“That reflects the new operating culture and procedures that have been put into place since the August 2018 incident. Overall, very good news.”

Outside eyes

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been keeping a closer eye on the work since it resumed, doing several unannounced inspections.

“The NRC inspectors concluded the corrective actions were effectively implemented to ensure the safe transfer of spent fuel” to dry storage, the NRC said in a November report.

The NRC did, however, note one violation with low safety significance, involving transporter operations and potential earthquake activity.

“During fuel transfer operations there continues to be a focus on safety,” Edison said in a Dec. 18 update. “Employees have a low threshold for use of the Corrective Action Program, which helps us to identify issues and track them, and helps with continuous learning. Teamwork is strong and is reflective of the successful downloads, as well as good communication on the pad during downloading.

“We continue to look at our procedures and make changes when necessary to improve performance.”

Should pools be spared?

In October, impassioned activists beseeched the California Coastal Commission to spare San Onofre’s spent fuel pools from destruction, raising the specter of  an “apocalyptic nightmare” — crippled canisters stuffed with dangerous radioactive waste, stranded on an abandoned beach because the pools that could have helped repair or repackage the spent atomic fuel no longer exist.

Edison countered that such pools are, indeed, available for emergencies as radioactive fuel from San Onofre is moved from wet to dry storage, where experts say it is safer. That process is when canister damage can occur — as evidenced by last year’s near-miss — but once all the waste is inside the Holtec “concrete monolith,” officials said, the fuel pools will be unnecessary.

Controversy over the “beachfront nuclear waste dump” continues to boil, as critics fear the waste will remain on the bluff indefinitely, and that the Holtec canisters are too thin, and not up to the task.

“These multimillion-dollar canisters must all be replaced with thick-wall casks,” said Donna Gilmore of SanOnofreSafety.org. “(E)very thin-wall canister is gouged as it’s downloaded into the storage holes due to the inferior Holtec engineering design.”

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