By John Stang
The California Coastal Commission has decided not to review a watchdog organization’s request for an extensive probe of an Aug. 3 mishap in the transfer of spent reactor fuel to dry storage at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS).
“Based on the information we have we believe this is a nuclear safety issues that is outside the purview of the Coastal Commission’s Coastal Development Permit and is exclusively under the jurisdiction of the (Nuclear Regulatory Commission),” a commission spokeswoman wrote in a Thursday email.
On Aug. 21, El Cajon-based Citizens’ Oversight sent a letter to the commission calling for the investigation, which the watchdog said should involve a halt to waste transfers, an accounting of similar incidents earlier in the process, and detailing by SONGS majority owner Southern California Edison of how it would respond to a worst-case scenario involving a fuel canister.
The fuel transfer, from SONGS’ spent fuel pool to a dry storage pad on the San Diego County property near the Pacific Ocean, has been suspended since the incident. It will not resume until the Nuclear Regulatory Commission completes a special inspection of the mishap.
The independent, quasi-judicial California Coastal Commission has regulatory authority over land and water use in the state coastal zone. Its authorization was necessary for SONGS’ owners to expand the storage pad to accommodate the remaining used fuel following the plant’s closure.
Given that the commission did issue a permit for expanding the dry storage site, it should have jurisdiction over the incident, Ray Lutz, founder of Citizens’ Oversight, told RadWaste Monitor. However, Lutz said he did not know if the organiation will pursue this avenue any further.
In 2013, Southern California Edison and SONGS’ minority owners permanently shut down reactor Units 2 and 3 rather than replace faulty steam generators that had kept the plant offline since the prior year. Reactor Unit 1 closed in 1992 and has already been decommissioned, with its fuel moved to the dry storage pad.
Contractor Holtec International began transferring spent fuel assemblies from Units 2 and 3 out of wet storage early this year and was due to complete the work by the middle of 2019. To date, 29 canisters of fuel assemblies have been transferred, with 44 to go. The material will remain on-site until some form of centralized off-site storage or disposal for U.S. nuclear reactor fuel is available.
On Aug 3, a canister got hung up on an interior ring of the dry storage silo it was being inserted into. It took 45 minutes to an hour for the rigging crew to figure out the problem, back up, and reinsert the canister more accurately, according to Holtec, Southern California Edison, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The canister sustained no damage.
A combination of the rigging crew being perplexed on how to deal with the problem and a few days’ delay in the public announcement of the incident led to public criticism of Holtec and SCE at an Aug. 9 meeting of the San Onofre Community Engagement Panel.
Holtec and SCE are continuing to study the incident.
The NRC last week also announced it would conduct its own inspection of the incident. The weeklong on-site inspection is expected to begin Sept. 10 and to include evaluations of all pertinent documentation and procedures connected to the fuel transfer work; assessment of corrective measures implemented following the incident; and interviews with personnel associated with the mishap. The nuclear industry regulator expects to issue its report in 45 days or less after completion of the probe.
On its own initiative and also at SCE’s request, Holtec has revised the rigging and inserting procedures to add more detail and check points. That includes updating briefings to ensure the supervisor and crew have a better understanding on conditions, roles, and critical points of the operation. Extra workers will be stationed with good views of the procedures to ensure extra eyes on activity. The lead rigger will undergo extra training regarding behaviors, and communications.
Separately, the NRC has issued a “non-cited violation” on safety operations at SONGS, the San Diego Union Tribune reported Thursday. The incident, which the agency said in an inspection report was of “low safety significance,” involved the need for more approvals prior to modifying a wall in reactor Unit 2 at the plant.
Rate Reductions
Southern California Edison this week initiated utility rate reductions for customers in the wake of the California Public Utilities Commission’s July 26 approval of a new settlement on costs for SONGS’ closure.
The settlement, reached by the plant’s owners and a number of consumer organizations, cut $775 million from the previously agreed upon $3.3 billion charge to ratepayers to help cover the estimated $4.7 billion price tag for SONGS’ premature, permanent shutdown in 2013.
It replaces a 2014 settlement agreement, also approved by the commission, that was rescinded two years later after it was found that then-CPUC President Michael Peevey and SCE executive Stephen Pickett conducted ex-parte talks in 2013 to secretly hammer out the details of the agreement.
The reductions translate to a one-time refund plus a small monthly savings for all customers.
The refund consists of roughly of $11 for an average residential customer and $6 for an average customer in the California Alternate Rates for Energy (CARE) assistance program, according to an SCE news release. Meanwhile, SCE calculates the average residential customer’s bill will drop by $2 a month, double the reduction for an average CARE customer. Nonresidential customers will see various bill reductions, depending on many variables, the news release said.
“The settling parties had proposed the reductions eight months ago and we are gratified to see these now go into effect for our customers,” said SCE President Ron Nichols in the release.
San Diego Gas & Electric and the city of Riverside are SONGS’ minority owners.
San Diego Gas & Electric said Aug 3 it expects its rate reductions to go into effect on Nov. 1. Residential customers can expect an average monthly decrease of $6.84 for two months, followed by a 0.9 reduction in their monthly bills afterward, according the utility.
While the city of Riverside owns slightly less than 2 percent of SONGS, its status as a municipal utility means it is not covered by the settlement agreement, a city spokesman said. Therefore, the city will not be issuing any rebates.
