Reactor’s Days Are Numbered

Despite concerns about storage of radioactive waste, San Onofre power plant officials won final approval Tuesday to begin dismantling one of their three nuclear reactors just south of San Clemente--a massive job expected to take at least six years and cost $460 million.

California Coastal Commission members meeting in San Diego voted unanimously to grant permission for the work, clearing the final hurdle for plant operator Southern California Edison Co., which already has approvals from state and federal regulators.

Fewer than a dozen nuclear plants in the nation have been decommissioned. The work at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station will be especially daunting because of its sheer size--the plant’s three units make up the largest nuclear power plant in the state and the second largest in the country.

Unit I, which started in 1968 and was shut down in 1992, sits beside two working reactors. Activists say that raises safety issues that don’t exist when a lone reactor is dismantled.

Plant spokesman Ray Golden said public meetings have been held and a civilian oversight committee is unnecessary because of the high degree of technical knowledge required. Expertise built up by plant operators over 30 years, in addition to the knowledge of federal regulators, “should be sufficient to meet the public’s needs,” he said.

At Tuesday’s hearing, several environmental activists also objected to plans for storing radioactive material near the reactor site for at least a decade.

“One of the most egregious threats to the public trust . . . is the de-facto creation of a coast nuclear waste dump,” said Mark Massara, a Sierra Club attorney.

Many on the commission agreed but noted they have no jurisdiction over storage of nuclear waste. Such matters are controlled by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

“I don’t think there’s anyone up here who feels safe with leaving this to the NRC,” said commission chairwoman Sara Wan. The Coastal Commission and environmentalists fear that the NRC will not oversee the dismantling with sufficient scrutiny.

Breck Henderson, a spokesman for the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said activists are sounding the alarm needlessly. “It’s not terribly dangerous,” he said. “There really isn’t much that can happen.”

Golden added that safety is the primary reason driving the work on Unit I. Officials once planned to start taking apart all three reactors in 2013, but decided to begin earlier because the current work force, which is intimately familiar with the unit’s operation, is approaching retirement age, he said.

Also, “the longer you wait to do a project, the more expensive the disposal of radioactive material will be,” Golden said.

More than $460 million for the decommissioning has been set aside from fees collected from ratepayers for years, Golden said. The 450-megawatt Unit I served about 500,000 homes and businesses.

Preliminary efforts, such as removing office furniture, have already begun. Major work could begin within a month. The Unit I reactor vessel can be disposed of only in Barnwell, S.C. Too heavy for road travel, it will be taken by rail to Oceanside, then shipped to South Carolina.

The spent nuclear fuel will remain on site for at least a decade. By law, the U.S. Department of Energy must safely dispose of the metal rods that contain spent uranium. No disposal facility exists, though federal officials are studying a possible site in the Yucca Mountains in Nevada. The rods, currently stored in pools of water, will be placed in steel-reinforced concrete containers and kept at San Onofre until at least 2010.

San Clemente resident Donald Davey told Coastal Commission members Tuesday that he was pleased to see the reactor going but dismayed by plans for storing radioactive waste.