North County Report: What's The Deal With San Onofre's Nuclear Power Plant?

By Tigist Layne, the Voice of San Diego

August 28, 2023

Last week, we learned that the organization charged with involving the public in the latest developments at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, or SONGS, is getting a new chairperson.

It’s called the Community Engagement Panel and they regularly meet with the public about the decommissioning, or dismantling, process of the now permanently closed nuclear plant and the efforts to store the plant’s 3.55 million pounds of nuclear waste.

This made me wonder how that decommissioning and storing process is going. Here’s what I found.

First, some background: Most San Diego residents are familiar with the San Onofre nuclear power plant. The plant is located south of San Clemente on Camp Pendleton and has become a landmark for San Diegans driving to and from the region.

The plant is owned by utility company Southern California Edison but hasn’t produced energy since 2012 after a leak in a steam generator tube led to its permanent closure.

For the past several years, SoCal Edison has been dismantling the plant, a process known as decommissioning. Once that process is complete, the land will go back to its owner, the U.S. Navy.

Before that can happen, though, there’s the issue of the 3.55 million pounds of nuclear waste currently sitting inside the facility.

The latest: Manuel Camargo, principal manager of the San Onofre Decommissioning Project, said 50 percent of the plant has been decommissioned so far. The San Onofre Decommissioning Project was created by SoCal Edison.

As for the nuclear waste, also known as spent nuclear fuel, the Department of Energy is moving forward with a plan to transport the fuel into a temporary storage facility. Once that happens, officials can complete the decommissioning process.

The final phase of decommissioning and site restoration will occur after the spent nuclear fuel is removed from the site.

SoCal Edison expects to start bringing the containment buildings down in 2026.

The big storage issue: By now, you’ve probably gathered that without a place to store the spent nuclear fuel, the decommissioning can’t be completed. And there’s a reason it’s been so hard to find storage space: The federal government doesn’t have a single designated place in the United States to permanently store and/or dispose of spent nuclear fuel.

Let’s rewind to 1982 when the Nuclear Waste Policy Act became law. It established a national program for the disposal of highly radioactive waste and supports the use of deep geologic repositories to store and/or dispose of that waste.

A deep geologic repository is essentially a cavern a couple thousand feet below the Earth’s crust where the spent fuel would be placed, and it would stay there forever. It’s a way to store the waste while avoiding the contamination of the air, ground and underground water. 

In 1987, Congress amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to designate Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the sole permanent deep geologic repository for the nation’s commercial nuclear waste. The government did this without actually asking Nevada, and Nevadans were not happy.

Opposition grew in Nevada, and in 2009, the federal government terminated the Yucca Mountain program, leaving no disposal site for the nation’s commercial nuclear waste.

So, until a permanent site is established by the federal government, the Department of Energy is stepping in.

“We are focused on consolidating all this spent nuclear fuel across the country in one or more sites so that we can reduce the number of locations where it exists across the country, which is greater than 70,” said Kathryn Huff, assistant secretary of the Department of Energy.

The department is working to provide these sites, called consolidated interim sites, in the next 10 to 15 years to store the nation’s spent nuclear fuel.

Officials are planning to use consent-based siting to establish these storage facilities, meaning only cities and jurisdictions that are willing and able to store the spent nuclear fuel will be considered and chosen.

But these storage sites will be temporary.

“This would only be part of the solution,” Camargo said. “Eventually, you need to permanently isolate the spent fuel from the biosphere, and there’s international consensus that the best way to do that is in a deep geologic repository.”

The Department of Energy also needs approval from Congress to create these interim storage sites because the Nuclear Waste Policy Act would have to be modified to allow for it. It will also be up to lawmakers to eventually amend the act and establish another permanent deep geologic repository for spent fuel.

A few different groups are now working together to get this done: the Spent Nuclear Fuel Solutions Congressional Caucus established by Rep. Mike Levin; the Department of Energy; and the Spent Fuel Solutions coalition, which includes San Diego County, Orange County, Riverside County, SoCal Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric and the City of Riverside.

Correction: This post has been updated to reflect when SoCal Edison expects to start bringing the containment buildings down. A spokesperson originally provided an incorrect year range.

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