Staff at the California Coastal Commission are recommending approval of a permit needed for major decommissioning operations to begin at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in San Diego County.
However, approval of the coastal development permit would be dependent on SONGS’ owners agreeing to nearly 20 special conditions, if the staff recommendations are accepted.
Commissioners are tentatively scheduled to consider the permit on the first day of their June 12-14 meeting in San Diego. They could vote on the matter, but that is not locked into the agenda, a commission spokesperson said Tuesday.
The San Onofre plant, on U.S. Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, encompasses three nuclear power reactors. Unit 1 was retired in 1992 and has been largely decommissioned. The new permit would cover only onshore decommissioning for Units 2 and 3, which were permanently shuttered in 2013 after being installed with faulty steam generators. Offshore work would require a separate permit to be filed later.
Plant majority owner Southern California Edison in 2016 hired SONGS Decommissioning Solutions, a joint venture of EnergySolutions and AECOM, to manage the anticipated $4.4 billion cleanup job.
“In the proposed project, most of the visible elements of the SONGS facility related to Units 2 and 3 (generally to three feet below local grade, although deeper in certain portions of the site) would be decommissioned, demolished, and disposed of in accordance with federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) standards for handling and disposing of radioactive waste,” according to the Coastal Commission staff report, filed May 24.
Decommissioning operations covered under the permit are expected to be completed by 2027, staff said.
Among the special conditions proposed for approval: Requiring SCE to provide the commission’s executive director with annual progress reports on decommissioning; payment of a $1 million mitigation fee to the California Ocean Protection Council for SONGS’ use of seawater from June 2013 to December 2022; and submission of plans for spill prevention control and contingency.
