San Onofre Community Engagement Panel to Discuss Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage, Safety
August 15 2019 - 4:00PM
Business Wire
The San Onofre Community Engagement Panel (CEP) will take a
closer look at various aspects of the spent nuclear fuel storage
system deployed at the San Onofre nuclear plant at its quarterly
meeting Aug. 22 in Laguna Hills.
Given the importance of safely managing spent fuel until it is
retrieved by the federal government, the CEP has focused on the
defense-in-depth concept relating to San Onofre’s spent fuel
storage during a number of meetings in the past five years.
Defense-in-depth, as defined by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
means having multiple layers of protection against accidents and
their effects to ensure the risk to the public is acceptably low.
San Onofre’s spent fuel canisters have a design life of 60 years
with a service life of potentially more than 100 years through
programmatic monitoring and maintenance.
“Until the federal government develops a credible, long-term
solution for spent nuclear fuel, we need to ensure the fuel is safe
on site, not just at San Onofre but across the country. That means
using robust stainless steel canisters designed for the conditions
at San Onofre, along with layers of careful inspections and
monitoring,” said David Victor, CEP chair. “In the case of San
Onofre, SCE has been responsive to input from the local communities
by, for example, employing special fabrication techniques such as
laser peening as part of its defense-in-depth strategy. What’s next
is to understand the monitoring systems and other layers of defense
needed to ensure the fuel is safe.”
The CEP has a page dedicated to defense-in-depth on the SONGS
Community website.
There will also be a presentation updating the current status of
spent fuel transfers from wet to dry storage at San Onofre. Since
fuel transfer operations restarted July 15, two canisters have been
safely downloaded into the dry storage facility. Forty-two remain
to be transferred.
The regular quarterly meeting will be from 5:30-8:30 p.m. at the
Laguna Hills Community Center, 25555 Alicia Parkway, Laguna Hills.
Staffed information booths will be open from 4:30-5:30 p.m. There
will be a public comment period, and the meeting will be
livestreamed via songscommunity.com.
SCE, majority owner of the San Onofre nuclear plant, announced
in June 2013 that it had retired San Onofre Units 2 and 3 and had
begun the process to decommission the facility. SCE has established
core principles of safety, stewardship and engagement to guide
decommissioning.
For more information about San Onofre, visit songscommunity.com
and follow SCE on Twitter and Facebook.
About Southern California Edison
An Edison International (NYSE:EIX) company, Southern California
Edison is one of the nation’s largest electric utilities, serving a
population of approximately 15 million via 5 million customer
accounts in a 50,000-square-mile service area within Central,
Coastal and Southern California.
View source
version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190815005626/en/
Media Contact: John Dobken, (626) 302-2255
Edison (NYSE:EIX)
Historical Stock Chart
From Aug 2024 to Sep 2024
Edison (NYSE:EIX)
Historical Stock Chart
From Sep 2023 to Sep 2024