Politics

San Onofre Security, Storage Topic Of Panel Discussion

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published April 16, 2015 at 3:00 AM PDT

This story was published more than 9 years ago.

A dry cask storage system for spent nuclear fuel.

Security and storage at the now-shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station will be on the agenda of a Community Engagement Panel Thursday night. The panel will be hosted by Southern California Edison in San Juan Capistrano.

Edison is proposing to bury tons of highly radioactive waste in stainless steel casks at San Onofre. The casks will remain there indefinitely since the federal government has failed to agree on a long-term storage site.

UC San Diego professor and panel chairman David Victor said local communities need to work together to lobby state agencies — like the California Department of Energy — to jump start the process of looking for a consolidated interim storage site for nuclear waste.

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Private companies have already proposed nuclear waste storage sites in Utah and Texas, Victor said.

“Could money that’s already been paid to the federal government and is sitting in a trust fund for storage — could some of that money be redirected to some of these private enterprises and create the strongest incentive possible for the private sector to help out with the solution here?” Victor asked.

Thursday’s meeting will also focus on the role of local law enforcement in maintaining security at the site, Victor said.

The Community Engagement Panel meeting will run from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the San Juan Capistrano Community Center at 32400 Paseo Adelanto.

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.