Despite the best-laid plans, no sensitive industrial operation proceeds without a bump, Southern California Edison officials told a skeptical audience this week.
After the near-drop of a 50-ton canister loaded with radioactive waste one year ago, Edison resumed the laborious transfer of spent nuclear fuel from San Onofre’s cooling pools to safer dry storage on July 15, with the blessings of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a slew of new equipment and procedures, and a determined attitude that bumps be minimized.
There was the matter of bolts that didn’t thread in easily when workers tried to secure a loaded canister for transport. And the issue of how wide-open a temporary door atop the vault — after canisters have been inserted, but before they’re sealed with a 35,000-pound lid — should be.
There was a worker adjusting some rigging whose shoulder appeared to go under a suspended load — a safety no-no — and rainwater that had pooled in some empty canisters.
But no canisters got stuck on shield rings and hung unsupported, which is what halted work on Aug. 3, 2018, and led to a $116,000 fine for Edison. Workers for Edison and contractor Holtec International raised issues when they had them, and managers made sure those concerns were addressed.
“There are no serious safety or human performance issues,” Lou Bosch, plant manager at the shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, told the volunteer Community Engagement Panel on Thursday, Aug. 22.
No repeats
After placing canisters Nos. 30 and 31 into the Holtec UMAX Hi-Storm dry storage system, Edison took a break to assess everything. The two companies have developed “rules of engagement” for inevitable disagreements, Bosch said, including “Be a good listener” and “Leave your ego at the door.”
That “August 3 will not repeat itself” has become something of a mantra in Edison’s communications with the public.
“There was good teamwork and communication on the dry storage area during the downloading of the canisters,” spokesman John Dobken said. “What issues we did see were captured as part of our lessons-learned, continuous-improvement program. That will help us be successful going forward.”
After hours of discussion on the thickness of canisters holding the waste (how thick they are isn’t the issue, so much as what they’re made of, Edison said), a real-time radiation monitoring system that will be accessible to the public (coming soon), and how scratches on the canisters might affect their performance long-term (Edison doesn’t expect any issues in our lifetime), a parade of people proceeded to the meeting microphone to express fear and doubt about what they heard, and to call Edison executives liars.
“You’re giving us a Plan A, but there’s no Plan B if something goes wrong,” said Gary Headrick of San Clemente Green.
Critics want the “beachfront nuclear waste dump” removed from the bluff over the Pacific Ocean as soon as possible. “I’m afraid it’s going to be here forever,” Headrick said.
Political problem
In the big picture, that’s a political problem that needs a political solution.
Nuclear power once was viewed as the nation’s future, and Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 to encourage its development. The federal government promised to accept and dispose of commercial nuclear fuel and high-level waste from reactors like San Onofre by Jan. 31, 1998; in return, utilities made quarterly payments into a disposal fund.
Utility customers pumped about $750 million a year into that fund, now valued at more than $40 billion. The federal government, however, has not accepted an ounce of commercial nuclear waste for permanent disposal as political fights rage about where to put a permanent repository.
Everyone wants the waste off the beach, Community Engagement Panel Chairman David Victor said, and people need to press the federal government to move on interim storage.
U.S. Rep. Mike Levin, D-San Juan Capistrano, has introduced a bill that would give San Onofre’s waste priority when moving time comes, and is pushing for $25 million in federal funding to further plans for temporary storage in places like Texas and New Mexico.
Levin also launched his own task force to study safety challenges at San Onofre, and continues to call for a full-time NRC inspector stationed there until fuel transfers are complete. Instead, the NRC is doing unannounced inspections, as full-time inspectors work at plants that are still splitting atoms.
Skeptics also repeated calls for Edison to inspect all canisters loaded into the Holtec system for scratches. Eight of 31 canisters have been inspected with a robotic camera, which Edison says is a scientific sample, but critics want more.
All the canisters will be inspected, eventually, as part of the aging management program, Edison said. The robotic inspection of those eight canisters was a first in the industry, and more inspections are coming in 2021 and 2024.
Edison expects to have canister No. 32 loaded into the Holtec system on Aug. 29, with No. 33 in by Sept. 6. The final canister of San Onofre’s spent fuel, No. 73, should be sealed into the so-called concrete monolith by the middle of 2020.
When the canisters will finally leave the bluff, however, is unclear.
“I am scared,” Laguna Woods Councilwoman Shari Horne said. “I am really scared.”
