Milestone at San Onofre: All spent fuel emptied from cooling pools, clearing way for plant dismantling
August 6, 2020 — Orange County Register — The nuclear odyssey that began in 1968 — when Lyndon B. Johnson was president, Apollo 8 orbited the moon and nuclear power was championed as a pillar of progress — has taken a historic turn.
The final fuel rods cooling in San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station’s spent fuel pools have been loaded into a stainless steel canister that’s slated to slide into a dry storage vault on Friday, Aug. 7. That’s more than 50 years after the plant’s original reactor first opened for business and closely coincides with the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, which marked the dawn of the “nuclear age.”
“Transfer of all of the spent fuel into dry cask storage represents a major milestone in the ongoing decommissioning of San Onofre,” said Victor Dricks, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, by email.
“The NRC will continue to have a frequent presence on site through our decommissioning oversight and inspection program and we will maintain close contact with Southern California Edison to ensure the spent fuel is stored safely and securely on site.”
While Edison is focused on safely storing this last canister and fully completing fuel transfer operations, said Vince Bilovsky, Edison’s deputy decommissioning officer, “Next week, we do begin a new chapter at SONGS as we become mostly a deconstruction site.”
The Holtec Hi-Storm Umax dry storage system for spent fuel at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. (Courtesy Southern California Edison)
This clears the way for the arduous, decade-long, $4.4 billion demolition of the retired San Onofre plant and its iconic twin domes to begin in earnest. It also marks the end of the fraught fuel-transfer process, which was marred by human error and a “near-miss” that halted work for nearly a year and evoked fear and mistrust among critics already predisposed to doubt Edison — as well as demands from lawmakers that the NRC station a full-time inspector at San Onofre until all fuel was in dry storage.
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