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Public Safety

Decommissioning Of San Onofre Topic Of Thursday Meeting

The location where Southern California Edison plans to store spent nuclear fuel at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station as part of decommissioning, Oct. 8, 2015.
Katie Schoolov
The location where Southern California Edison plans to store spent nuclear fuel at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station as part of decommissioning, Oct. 8, 2015.

Decommissioning Of San Onofre Topic Of Thursday Meeting
Progress on the decommissioning of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station will be reviewed Thursday at a public hearing in Oceanside.

Progress on the decommissioning of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station will be reviewed Thursday at a public hearing in Oceanside.

The plant stopped operating in June 2013, 18 months after a small radioactive leak was discovered in new steam generators.

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Members of Southern California Edison’s Community Engagement Panel are working to build support for federal legislation to remove tons of nuclear waste off-site.

Tom Palmisano, Edison’s vice president for decommissioning, said plans are on track to have all the spent fuel out of cooling ponds and buried on site in dry casks by 2019. But he supports efforts to move it to consolidated interim storage elsewhere.

“We are certainly committed to doing everything we can to move the fuel off-site as soon as realistically possible and we are advocating through our own contacts for this," Palmisano said.

The California State Lands Commission is conducting an environmental impact review of the decommissioning process.

“I’m sure there will be some challenges throughout the process,” Palmisano said. "But I think we have a good plan.“

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Edison already has a permit from the California Coastal Commission to store the spent fuel on-site. The dry cask storage is 100 feet from the sea wall separating the plant from the beach. Alternative “consolidated interim storage” sites in Texas and New Mexico have not yet applied for permits, and could be decades away.

The public is welcome to attend the meeting from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursday at the QLN Conference Center, 1938 Avenida Del Oro, Oceanside. Staffed information booths will be open from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. There will be a public comment period and the meeting will be live streamed via songscommunity.com.

Corrected: April 25, 2024 at 7:40 AM PDT
An earlier version of this story had the incorrect first name of Edison's Vice President for Decommissioning Tom Palmisano.
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