Edison wants to resume loading nuclear waste at San Onofre in January

The errors of the past will not be repeated, Southern California Edison promised a skeptical audience on Thursday night – enduring heckles as it unveiled plans to resume loading nuclear waste into its beachside “concrete bunker” in January.

Loading the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station’s highly radioactive waste into dry storage – which experts say is far safer than the spent fuel pools where most waste still resides – was halted in August, after a 50-ton canister got stuck on a shield ring near the top of the 18-foot vault where it was to be entombed. The slings supporting the canister’s massive weight went slack, and it hung there, unsupported, for close to an hour, in danger of dropping.

What will be different this time around? Cameras – to be monitored by many eyes – will watch as the behemoths descend into dry storage vaults. Alarms will go off if there’s a sudden, significant change in the weight supported by the canister-lowering machinery. Workers will be more rigorously trained at loading canisters into the Holtec Hi-Storm UMAX system. And management will be more “intrusively engaged,” said Edison vice president Tom Palmisano at Thursday’s meeting of the San Onofre Community Engagement Panel – the volunteer group advising Edison on the plant’s tear-down.

“Propaganda!” audience members cried as he tried to talk, branding the Holtec dry storage system a lemon and urging the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to revoke the license that allowed its construction.

“This system from Holtec needs to be recalled and it needs to be recalled now!” said an angry Jeff Steinmetz. “And you guys have got to do your job because you are not doing it!”

Many beseeched the NRC to have inspectors on site in January when Edison plans to resume loading canisters into the Holtec system, and to keep inspectors there until the job is done, which will take about a year.

Edison is already re-training workers in the new protocols, and will continue training for the next week-and-a-half, Palmisano said. There will be practice runs – where workers load dummy canisters into vaults – on Dec. 11 and Dec. 17. Loading of real canisters with real waste is slated to resume in the latter part of January, if the NRC agrees.

The NRC issued its final report on the Aug. 3 mishap on Wednesday. It had already laid blame squarely at Edison’s feet – “They fell asleep at the switch,” an NRC inspection team leader said, concluding that the near-drop was the result of inadequate training, oversight and supervision – but the final report revealed that the stainless steel canisters had often scraped against the vaults, and could have been scratched during the process.

That could cause problems down the line.

“From January 30 to August 3, 2018, during canister downloading, contact between the canister and vault components frequently occurred,” the NRC’s report said. “However, the licensee (Edison) failed to enter instances of contact into its corrective action program and perform an assessment to disposition the exterior conditions of the downloaded canisters and vault components….

“(T)he failure to evaluate and disposition wear marks on a canister, if left uncorrected, could impact the adequacy of the aging management program,” the NRC said.

That’s of grave concern to activist Donna Gilmore, who said scratches can lead to cracks in the canisters.

“The NRC and Edison should admit this system is a lemon,” Gilmore said by email. “Every canister is already worn in numerous locations (states the NRC) with no ability to measure wear, such as cracks, and no ability to repair them. In hotter canisters, such as these, cracks grow faster. It’s time for Edison to cut their losses and get our ratepayer money back from Holtec.

“Until San Onofre thin-wall canister systems are replaced with proven thick-wall casks, none of us are safe.”

The NRC is charging Edison with two potential major violations, and several lesser ones. Before the NRC settles on enforcement actions and penalties, Edison gets to respond – which it can do either in public meetings directly with NRC staff, or in private mediation. It will decide within the next several weeks – something which also enraged some members of the public.