Southern California Edison (SCE) is taking steps to meet its commitments for off-site disposal of used fuel from the retired San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, but has hit a roadblock in efforts to ultimately ship the waste to Arizona.
The San Diego County nuclear plant closed permanently in 2013 due to problems with steam generators for reactor Units 2 and 3. Majority owner SCE now plans to move the reactors’ spent fuel to dry storage on a pad near the Pacific Ocean alongside used fuel from Unit 1, which closed in 1992. In total, that would be about 3.5 million pounds of waste.
The utility in August 2017 settled a lawsuit filed by the watchdog group Citizens’ Oversight against a state permit issued in 2015 authorizing beachside storage of the additional spent fuel. The settlement allows Southern California Edison to build and stock the expanded storage pad, but requires it to take “commercially reasonable efforts” to relocate the fuel elsewhere.
Part of that involves establishing an expert panel to advise Southern California Edison in preparing strategic and transportation plans for moving the waste to an off-site location expected to be somewhere in the southwestern United States.
There were no updates regarding the plans in a Dec. 22 status report on implementation of the settlement agreement. But SCE said it was evaluating more than 30 candidates whose names were proposed by Dec. 8 for inclusion on the expert panel. The utility has 90 calendar days after receiving the proposals to select the consultants for the team.
The settlement agreement also gave Southern California Edison 90 calendar days to formally propose that SONGS’ spent fuel be shipped to an expanded storage pad at the Palo Verde nuclear power plant in Arizona, of which the utility is a minority owner. Majority owner Arizona Public Service has made clear it would reject this proposal.
Southern California Edison, at an October meeting of the Palo Verde Administrative Committee, called for additional talks among the plant’s owners on the SONGS’ fuel plan. But the proposal failed to garner the unanimous approval necessary to proceed.
