Critics Question Plans For Nuclear Waste Storage At San Onofre Nuclear expert says it’s a “witches brew of radioactivity” 7 San Deiego By JW August , 30 Sept 16 The threat of a nuclear meltdown is no longer a concern at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station because it’s shut down.
A shuttered nuclear plant does present another potential threat to public safety, according to an editorial in the April 2016 edition of Scientific American Magazine. The article warns of a greater danger, and says “more threatening than a meltdown, it’s the steady accumulation of radioactive waste.”
The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station was permanently retired by its owners, Southern California Edison, SCE, and SDG&E in 2013. The plant’s operations left 3.6 million pounds of radioactive waste behind.
If all goes as planned that radioactive waste is headed to bluffs just north of the dead reactors above San Onofre State Beach. It will sit near Interstate 5 in Southern California between two major metropolitan areas, San Diego and Los Angeles, where 17 million people call home.
Fifty canisters of radioactive leftovers, from fuel burned before the plant closed, are already in storage on the plant’s property. It accounts for about 30 percent of the radioactive waste on site. In the spring of 2017, the remaining radioactive waste will begin to be moved out of the pools of cooling water where it is currently stored and into 100 stainless steel dry casks which will also be encased in a cement pad.
Daniel Hirsch, the Director of the Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy at UC Santa Cruz, said it is imperative the fuel rods be moved out of the pools and into dry casks as soon as possible.
“It is the most dangerous stuff on earth; a witches brew of radioactive material,” he said.
A fuel rod is a long zirconium metal tube containing pellets of fissionable material, which provide fuel for nuclear reactors.
“Those pools are so densely packed, that if you lose the coolant you could have a fire in them,” Hirsch said.
According to a report from Robert Alvarez, a former policy advisor to the U.S. Department of Energy, a pool fire would release more radioactivity than a reactor meltdown. Hirsch, a long-time critic of the industry told NBC 7 Investigates the clock is ticking, something the plant’s owners agree with.
The location of the waste storage is something the plant’s owners and nuclear waste critics do not agree with.
“They’re going to be stored on the beach in the worst possible location you can imagine,” Charles Langley, who opposes the storage plans at San Onofre, said. Langley tracks all things related to San Onofre and the nuclear waste storage plans for Public Watchdogs, a San Diego based non-profit website.
The proposed storage site is northwest of the plant’s units one and two; the two reactor domes that can be seen from the freeway.
Currently, the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is the largest privately-owned coastal nuclear storage site in the country. When compared to government owned sites, it’s the second largest in the country, behind the Hanford Site in Washington where the first plutonium reactor was built and the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan was created.
Langley said the location selected is all about money. “It’s the cheapest alternative,” he said. “It’s what’s best for the stockholders. It’s not what’s best for the people of Orange and San Diego County.”
SCE does not agree. Neither does the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, NRC, and the California Coastal Commission, which both approved the Pacific coastline location.
It’s not a case of no risk, the utilities argue, but low risk.
In January, due to El Nino weather conditions, there was considerable erosion of the beaches and bluffs around the San Onofre plant, the same area where the canisters will be stored.
Nina Babiarz, a transportation consultant and former journalist, said the location for the nuclear waste storage is a poor one. “It’s on an earthquake fault in a tsunami zone,” she said. NBC 7 Investigates reviewed weather reports and found rising sea levels at and around the nuclear waste storage location could continue.
A Pacific Institute report on sea level rise, with contributions by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, found “flooding and erosion” risks will increase. According to the report, “in areas where the coast erodes easily, sea level rise will likely accelerate shoreline recession” and “may expose previously protected areas to flooding.” The United States Geological Service found the same dynamics: extreme bluff, cliff and beach erosion, accelerating over time.
The City of Del Mar, located 33 miles from San Onofre and with a similar coastline, did its own risk assessment of projected impact from sea level rise, storm surges and coastal flooding. In its assessment it describes the potential for extensive flooding and cliff collapses. …………http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Critics-Question-Plans-For-Nuclear-Waste-Storage-At-San-Onofre-395305981.html
