Recent incident at San Onofre Nuclear plant sparks controversy

The utility operating the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station confirmed an incident last week involving a canister containing spent nuclear fuel and has directed the contractor in charge of transferring the fuel to conduct additional training. All transfers have been put on hold, Southern California Edison officials said in a statement released Aug. 10.

The cannister, loaded by a crew from Holtec Aug. 3, got wedged, but a Southern California Edison oversight team discovered the canister was not sitting properly, Edison officials said. The canister was then re-positioned correctly and placed at the bottom of the enclosure.

The statement by Edison came on the heels of statements made by David Fritch during the public comments period at the Aug. 9 meeting of the SONGS Community Engagement Panel in Oceanside. Fritch, who said he was an industrial safety worker associated with the federal government's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said he feared he would be fired over the statements, but he went on to describe a series of safety issues that he's witnessed on the project.

Fritch said in the incident Aug. 3, one of the canisters that was being lowered into an enclosure, "could have fallen 18 feet," he said. "That's a bad day." Fritch went on to say that similar issues have happened and that they weren't shared with the rest of the crew or the public.

"You haven't heard about it, and that's not right," Fritch said. "Public safety should be first, and I've been around nuclear for many years. Behind that gate, it's not."

A video recording of meeting in its entirety is available at http://www.songscommunity.com/community-engagement/meetings/community-engagement-panel-meeting-20180629.

Charles Langley is the Executive Director of Public Watchdogs, a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit that was formed with the intent of "protecting the public from the California Public Utilities Commission."

When asked whether he thought Edison is hiding information from the public, he said, "We don't think it, we know it.

"When SONGS failed in January of 2012, it blew a plume of toxic radiation into the atmosphere. Edison waited 27 days to report the radiation leak publicly."

In the statement made Aug. 10 about the Aug. 3 incident, Edison said, "At no point during this incident was there a risk to employee or public safety, and immediate lessons learned have already been integrated in our processes."

But Langley said Fritch's coming forward signals more confirmation for his group that they are doing the right thing in pushing back against what he calls a culture of secrecy at Edison.

"It is forcing them into cover-up mode," Langley said. "The public should have been informed immediately of the two cask drops at San Onofre. The public has a right to know when the public's health is jeopardized."

After the training delay, Edison plans to transfer the fuel assemblies from cooling pools on the grounds of the abandoned power plant, located just north of Oceanside, into steel-lined canisters that will be placed in a concrete encasement. Since February, operators of the plant have been transferring those canisters from "wet storage'' into the encasement, located on the north side of the plant, just a little more than 100 feet from the shoreline.

"The nuclear industry lives in fear of a cask drop. Even a hairline crack would release millions of curies of radiation," Langley said. "This is far more serious than a worker safety issue. A cracked can could lead to oxygen leaking into the can, precipitating a hydrogen explosion, damage to the spent fuel pellets, and ultimately, a criticality event, meaning a sustained nuclear reaction that cannot be controlled or stopped."

But Edison argued in the statement that the utility and the commission is doing all it can to safeguard the community.

"Additional actions and training were added to the loading processes, which is a part of our ongoing efforts to continuously improve our work practices," Edison said in the statement. "We do this routinely to ensure we are continuously evaluating our performance, communicating with the crews, and incorporating best practices – all of these steps were discussed at the San Onofre Community Engagement Panel meeting last night."

But Langley and Public Watchdogs want to try to stop the process entirely to re-evaluate the entire plan. He said more than 100 people came to the SONGS meeting Aug. 9, some spoke to the panel and some were there in support.

"We want to stop the burial of the nuclear waste on the beach, see it moved to a safer location and to force Edison to use safer technology," Langley said. "San Onofre is a ticking time bomb. These (canisters) are called 'mobile Chernobyls' because each one contains more deadly Cesium than the amount released during the entire Chernobyl disaster.

Langley said the group fears that the canisters are thin, warrantied for about 10 years and will be in a geologically unstable area that is vulnerable to earthquakes, tsunamis, terrorist attacks and stress corrosion cracking.

"The most feasible alternative is moving the waste inland and using thick walled 'dry casks' that are designed to store the deadly waste safely for hundreds of years," Langley said.

For more information on the SONGS Community Engagement Panel, visit songscommunity.com. To learn more about Public Watchdogs, visit publicwatchdogs.org.

City News Service contributed to this report.

Jeff Pack can be reached at [email protected].