Edison gets green light to dismantle San Onofre’s underwater infrastructure

The California State Lands Commission on Thursday, March 21, vowed to put its muscle behind efforts to compel Congress and the federal government to find a permanent home for the nation’s nuclear waste.

“We have to raise our voices and put pressure on them,” said Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, chair of the commission, at the panel’s meeting in Oceanside. “It’s never been anyone’s intention or interest to keep this fuel here in California. It was a promise that such a facility would be in place by now — and it isn’t. We have to advocate for a long-term solution.”

Technically, the day’s business had nothing to do with radioactive waste at the shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

Commissioners approved an environmental report that will allow Southern California Edison to start dismantling much of San Onofre’s offshore infrastructure — idle pipes that once sucked water into the nuclear plant to cool it, and then spit it out again.

That work will be done using underwater divers, derrick and materials barges, and tug boats, “and will require anchoring and a temporary seafloor laydown area for removed vertical structures during dispositioning,” the staff report said. It’s expected to be completed by 2028

“Let’s get on with the work of the decommissioning,” said Fred Briggs, a nuclear engineer who worked on the design, construction and operation of San Onofre.

But the seemingly mundane decision came after hours of passionate testimony from people who beseeched commissioners to postpone approval. Edison, they said, should not be allowed to tear down offshore infrastructure without considering problems on land — specifically, problems with the beach-side “concrete monolith” that will house San Onofre’s spent fuel for decades.

Edison and contractor Holtec made mistakes loading steel fuel canisters into that dry storage system last year — mistakes that likely left scratches on canisters, and which some worry will cause premature cracking and even radiation leaks.

Last Aug. 3, a 50-ton canister filled with nuclear waste got stuck on a shield ring near the top of the 18-foot vault where it was to be entombed. Workers didn’t realize that the slings supporting the canister’s massive weight went slack. It hung there, unsupported, for close to an hour, in danger of dropping.

Fuel transfers from wet pools to dry storage screeched to a halt as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Edison tried to unravel what happened, and how to prevent it from happening again. In November, the NRC laid blame squarely at Edison’s feet, saying it “fell asleep at the switch” and concluded that the near-drop was the result of inadequate training, oversight and supervision.

On Monday, March 25, the NRC will hold an enforcement conference announcing whether Edison will be forced to pay fines for those errors, if the problems have been sufficiently corrected, and when it might be allowed to resume transferring fuel from wet to dry storage.

For many critics, the issues couldn’t be separated.

“The NRC approved a bad design with an imprecise loading mechanism that causes damage all down the side of the canisters,” said Donna Gilmore, a retired systems analyst who runs SanOnofreSafety.org. “Once you scratch or gouge stainless steel, you’ve shortened the life. This was not part of what got approved.”

To address fears of radiation leaks, Edison promised to develop a “real-time” radiation monitoring system. The results likely will include high, low and average readings, as well as normal background readings for comparison. Plans are to send them monthly to a public agency — such as the Orange County or San Diego sheriff’s departments — for online publication, Edison Vice President Doug Bauder said.

Infrastructure buried beneath the ocean floor will remain for now, as digging it out could be traumatic to the marine environment, officials say. A decision on whether to leave it permanently will come in the next decade or so.

Eventually, the infrastructure on land also will be dismantled. The cost of the entire project is estimated at $4.4 billion, which will be paid by a decomissioning fund built up over years with monthly contributions from Edison ratepayers.