A petition review board at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued final rulings against requests by two advocacy organizations to halt the decommissioning and spent-fuel offload at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in California.
The petitions from Public Watchdogs and Oceansiders Against San Onofre Corruption do not meet the acceptance criteria for reviews of requests for action under NRC regulations, among other issues, according to similar letters to both organizations from Kevin Williams, deputy director for the agency’s Division of Materials Safety, Security, State, and Tribal Programs.
The board’s findings are backed by the director of the NRC Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Williams added in the Feb. 26 letter to Public Watchdogs and a March 4 letter to Oceansiders.
“There is no mechanism to appeal a review board decision where the petition fails to meet acceptance criteria,” NRC spokesman Scott Burnell said by email Friday. “The petitioner retains the option to file a new 2.206 request.”
Utility Southern California Edison (SCE) in 2013 permanently retired the last two reactors at the San Diego County facility after faulty steam generators were installed in each system. In 2014, it hired Holtec International to transfer all used fuel from the units’ cooling pools into an expanded dry-storage pad along the Pacific Ocean.
Locals’ concerns about storing radioactive material in a seismically active, densely populated region have been exacerbated by several incidents – notably an August 2018 mishap in which one spent-fuel canister was left at risk of an 18-foot drop into its storage slot. That event led to a nearly year-long suspension of operations while SCE and Holtec revised their procedures and safety measures, and generated a $116,000 fine from the NRC against the utility for violation of federal nuclear regulations.
The used-fuel transfer resumed last July and is scheduled to be completed by this summer. Major decommissioning operations began late last month under management of contractor SONGS Decommissioning Solutions. That projected $4.4 billion job is scheduled to wrap up by 2028.
The August 2019 petition from Oceansiders called on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to take several measures, including revoking a state permit that allowed expansion of the storage pad to accommodate the two reactors’ used fuel and relocating the waste to some lower-population-density area. Its case for approval stated that SONGS’ storage pad is in a tsunami zone near an earthquake fault line and that the offload “has been conducted by insufficiently trained workers with inadequate safeguards to protect the public safety.”
The September 2019 petition from Public Watchdogs attorney Charles La Bella sought an immediate halt to all decommissioning activities at SONGS and that Southern California Edison be directed to file an updated decommissioning plan addressing on-site spent fuel storage. The petition asserted that used-fuel storage at SONGS creates “an immediate threat to public safety,” that the decommissioning cost projection is questionable, and that the NRC failed to consider climate change and other environmental issues in allowing decommissioning to proceed, according to Williams.
The Oceansiders case against the California Coastal Commission permit was dismissed from the proceeding in November, given the federal agency’s lack of jurisdiction over the state action. The NRC in December informed both organizations of the petition review board’s initial determinations against their filings. Public Watchdogs and Oceansiders then conducted separate meetings with the board in late January to make final arguments for their petition. Ultimately, the board sustained its decisions.
“The NRC has continued to carefully regulate the licensee’s decommissioning activities at SONGS, which include its review of the UMAX fuel storage system design, inspections encompassing the physical facility as well as the licensee’s operational performance, and appropriate enforcement actions,” Williams wrote in the letter to Public Watchdogs. There is a similar statement in this week’s letter to Oceansiders.
Completion of the offload will leave about 3.5 million pounds of spent-fuel rods stored on-site at SONGS, which sits on Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton. Under the 2017 settlement to a lawsuit from the watchdog group Citizens’ Oversight, SCE has agreed to take “commercially reasonable” steps to find another home for the waste. That process continues.
