By Alberto Garcia
Investigative Reporter

The shuttered nuclear power plant that sits idly just north of San Diego County since shutting down its generation capabilities in 2013 still stores over 3.5 million pounds of nuclear waste.

A group of local elected officials, including Congressman Mike Levin who represents the area, and scientist held a meeting at the University of California, San Diego this week to discuss the risks and costs associated with maintaining the spent fuel on site and the federal government’s failure to store spent fuel from nuclear plants around the country.

“This fuel sits just 100 feet from the Pacific Ocean, on an active fault line, near Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, and near San Diego and Los Angeles,” Rep. Mike Levin (D-Oceanside) told Wednesday’s event attendees. “It’s neither the safest nor most effective long-term solution for our spent nuclear fuel.”

Congressman Mike Levin

The US government was required to begin storing spend nuclear fuel in 1998 but has still not developed a plan or found a location to do so, resulting in a successful lawsuit filed by Southern California Edison, the principal owner of the San Onofre plant. The plant is owned by SCE (78.2%), San Diego Gas & Electric (20%), and the City of Riverside Utilities Department (1.8%).

SCE has received over $9 billion in federal funds to continue to maintain the spent nuclear fuel on site while the federal government looks for a long-term site to combine an estimated 89,000 metric tons of waste from all current and decommissioned nuclear power plants in 35 states.

The federal government had a proposal to build a nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain in southern Nevada but the Obama administration essentially killed the plan in 2011 under heavy lobbying from Nevada Senator Harry Reid. President Donald Trump also opposed the site and President Biden did not include Yucca Mountain in his nuclear waste proposal.

Spent nuclear fuel waste from San Onofre is now held in dry storage containers lined with concrete. San Onofre is one of 17 decommissioned nuclear power plants in the US that still maintain their spent nuclear fuel waste onsite.

First commissioned in 1968 with one pressurized water reactor, the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, known as SONGS, operated Unit 1 until it was decommissioned in 1992, and two additional reactors, Unit 2 and Unit 3, which were commissioned in 1993 and 1994, respectively.

In January 2012, while Unit 2 was shut down for routine refueling and repairs, Unit 3 was shut down after it suffered a small reactive leak below safe allowable levels. During an investigation into the leak, the steam generators in both units showed premature wear on over 3,000 of the tubes used within the generators.

The reactors were never restarted after SCE decided to close down the facility under continued protests and opposition to the power plant.

SCE has since organized a lengthy $4.7 billion teardown process that is expected to continue through 2027, but the facility will remain operational until the spent nuclear fuel waste is eventually moved to a permanent storage facility.