The California Coastal Commission on Thursday approved a 13-year extension of a permit for one of two garage services containing more than 50 boxes containing nuclear waste at the now-shuttered San Onofre nuclear plant.
The extension was approved by a 9-0 vote, but commissioners said they were not enthusiastic about the prospect of spent nuclear fuel remaining at the plant for the foreseeable future, as the U. S. government has been able to afford the plant. UU. no has sought a permanent repository to buy waste. advertising nuclear equipment such as San Onofre.
“I have a lot of considerations [but] we’re in a complicated scenario with no characteristics of the federal government,” said Commissioner Effie Turnbull-Sanders.
The permit was extended to a garage facility in San Onofre, where up to 63 spent fuel boxes and other high-level radioactive elements have been in operation since 2001. The garage site permit expires next month.
A momentary garage installation, built more recently, 73 boxes that have been lowered vertically into the cavities of the garage. Its license extends until October 2035.
The two garage sites are at the northern end of the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant, known as CANCIONES for short.
Southern California Edison, the app that operates the plant that is being decommissioned recently, approached the commission and requested a 13-year extension so that any of the garage services would have access and operate simultaneously.
“Having them together, so that we were looking at the entirety of [two garage sites], makes sense to us and, in fact, the opinion of the Coastal Commission staff is that it also made sense,” Manuel Camargo, head of strategic planning at Edison and SONGS, said after the meeting.
Camargo said aligning the permit schedule at the two garages will make it easier in case the sites want to be changed if sea levels in the coming years exceed existing projections or if either allows change, if the federal government discovers places where song cans can be shipped.
The new permit requires Edison to meet a number of conditions, adding a requirement that the application provide a long-term coastal hazard investigation, pay for a third-party review to ensure the cartridges remain in good condition and report to the commission on any progress made in locating pickup locations for SONGS waste.
During the meeting, which was held at a Shelter Island hotel and convention center, a San Diego-based client organization raised considerations about a segment of the permit. Public observers feared that an express paragraph would open the door to the boxes of other nuclear facilities: such as Diablo Canyon, operated through Pacific Gas.
Camargo said Edison “had no interest in storing spent fuel from any other facility” and after follow-up questions from 3 commissioners, the permit wording was deleted to make sure SONGS won’t settle for any spent fuel from some other plant. .
More than 3. 55 million pounds of spent fuel from the days the plant generated electric power for Southern California remain near San Onofre Beach because, as is the case with nuclear power plants across the country, the federal government has not discovered a permanent repository to purchase the roughly 86,000 metric tons of spent fuel that have accumulated over decades in the nuclear facilities in the announcement.
Yucca Mountain in Nevada intended to take the trash, but Obama’s management halted investment in the site in 2010, after years of protests from Silver State lawmakers who had long opposed the project. The federal government recently announced its goal of actively seeking communities willing to settle for the national reserve on a provisional basis.
SONGS is being dismantled and is lately in the third year of an eight-year, $4. 5 billion planned decommissioning allocation that requires approximately 1. 1 billion pounds of curtains removed through 2028.
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Rob Nikolewski is the power reporter for the San Diego Union-Tribune. With a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University and public administration from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, Nikolewski covered politics and power in Santa Fe, New Mexico, before joining U-T in February 2016. Earlier in his career, Nikolewski worked as a television sports anchor in markets such as New York, Boston, Pittsburgh and Phoenix, winning 3 regional Emmy Awards. He lives in San Diego with his adorable golden retriever, Honey.
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