Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
10/17/2014
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is set to hold the public meeting for the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station’s decommissioning plan Oct. 27. The NRC will meet with the public from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. in Carlsbad, Calif. to discuss and answer questions on Southern California Edison’s Post-Shutdown Decommissioning Activities Report (PSDAR), cost estimate and used fuel management plan. Both the NRC and SCE will present at the meeting, with ample time left for public comment. “At the public meeting, NRC officials will describe the decommissioning process, including the current transition of the SONGS licensing basis from operating to decommissioning status, decommissioning inspections, and spent fuel management issues,” the NRC said. “An official from Edison will present the company’s plans for decontaminating and dismantling the facilities. NRC staff experts will be available to answer questions from the public.” The public may also submit comments in writing until Dec. 27.
The decommissioning documents outline the estimated costs and planned timeline for the project, with a price tag of approximately $4.4 billion and a start date for major decommissioning activities to begin in 2016. SCE had completed a draft Post-Shutdown Decommissioning Activities Report (PSDAR), cost estimate and used fuel management plan at the end of July, but it wanted community feedback before officially submitting the documents to the NRC in September. The NRC reviews the document, but it does not make a yes/no decision for approval.
CEP Meets to Discuss Emergency Preparedness Exemptions
Meanwhile, last week, the SONGS Community Engagement Panel held a meeting to discuss the much-criticized emergency preparedness exemptions SCE has sought. SCE is seeking to reduce the staff and area needed for readiness in an attempt to cut costs as the reactor moves to more of a decommissioning phase. NRC presented at meeting and highlighted the site-specific nature of their review. “Each plant has to provide justification for what they’re exempting and why,” said Joe Anderson from the NRC Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response’s Division of Preparedness and Response. “Within the exemption request, there needs to be something of a specific justification for each request.” Anderson added that much of the technical justifications for the exemptions are the same for many plants. “While its site specific, a lot of the logic is identical behind it in terms of the technical rational behind it,” he said. “Where we are really specifically looking at some of the site specific nature behind it is mitigation and staffing that may be very specific to the plant design or how they are going to manage that.”
SONGS’ Chief Nuclear Officer Tom Palmisano also spoke in the meeting, highlighting the differences between an operating and decommissioning reactor. “What’s driving this request is we look at what the hazards are,” Palmisano said. “First and foremost this is about public health and safety. With the spectrum of accidents that could occur at power, with the short lived radioactivity that could be released at power, those two are gone. So what drives the request is let’s change the plan, change the requirements to match the hazards that are there today and focus our efforts on staffing that. That’s what drives the change in the plan.” Palmisano also said that the changes would not take place until the Commission granted the exemption request, which he expects to happen by the end of this year.
Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) has been critical of NRC exemptions, especially for pending exemption requests for SONGS in her home state, which came within a half-mile of a wildfire last month and sits in an active earthquake zone. Boxer, along with Sens. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), has introduced legislation that would inhibit the NRC’s ability to grant safety and security exemptions at decommissioning sites. The “Safe and Secure Decommissioning Act of 2014” would prohibit the NRC from issuing exemptions from its emergency response or security requirements for spent fuel stored at nuclear reactors that have permanently shutdown until all of the spent nuclear fuel stored at the site has been moved into dry casks.
