Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
12/19/2014
The City of Laguna Beach, located near the San Onofre Nuclear generating Station (SONGS), passed a resolution this week that called on the Department of Energy to move forward ‘expeditiously’ with the removal of spent fuel. The Laguna Beach resolution calls on DOE to remove the fuel as quickly as possible. “The City of Laguna Beach request that the Department of Energy move forward expeditiously with the creation of a permanent spent nuclear fuel repository as assigned by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982,” the resolution said. “The City of Laguna Beach does not support long-term or indefinite storage of spent nuclear fuel at SONGS, and formally requests that federal representatives coordinate with the appropriate agencies to take whatever regulatory action necessary to identify a safe and secure interim location in an unpopulated area to store SONGS’ spent nuclear fuel.”
This latest resolution is part of a growing opposition movement in communities near shutdown reactors that fear spent fuel could stay in the community indefinitely should DOE fail to move forward with a nuclear waste management strategy. Laguna Beach, with a population of 23,250, is not the first local community near SONGS to pass this type of resolution. San Clemente, a town with a population of 65,000, passed a similar resolution in November, which stated: “The City of San Clemente formally requests that the DOE and the NRC renew efforts to find a real and lasting solution to our nation’s nuclear waste problem.”
Long-Term Storage Has Surprised Communities
The realization that the waste will continue to be stored on site has surprised many communities, according to SONGS Community Engagement Panel Chairman David Victor. In remarks made at the RadWaste Summit earlier this year, Victor said that the industry needs to do a better job articulating the realities of spent fuel. He added that some of the public needs a better understanding of where the nation is in regards to spent fuel management, a fact that does not hit home until spent fuel management is needed. “Part of your early communication strategy needs to be to involve understanding what the public really thinks about this and what the public needs to be assured that long-term storage is safe and viable. The industry has not articulated that very well. I think that part of the reason why people are surprised by this,” Victor said.
Last week, Southern California Edison, the owner of SONGS, announced that Holtec International was chosen to install its dry cask storage system at SONGS. According to Spent Fuel Management document submitted to the NRC in September, SONGS plans to complete the spent fuel transfer by 2019. SCE’s strategy included an anticipated date of spent fuel pick up by the Department of Energy in 2050, but SCE has admitted that date is dependent on movement on DOE’s part. The other decommissioning documents submitted to the NRC outline the estimated costs and planned timeline for the cleanup, with a price tag of approximately $4.4 billion and a start date for major decommissioning activities to begin in 2016.
