nuclear-news

San Onofre site to get “concrete monolith” for high level radioactive trash – spent nuclear fuel

Watchdog: Nuclear waste can be stored at new San Onofre site, Coastal Commission says, Orange County Register, by Teri Sforza, Oct. 6, 2015  The California Coastal Commission on Tuesday approved construction of a controversial “concrete monolith” to bury spent fuel at the shuttered San Onofre nuclear power plant, despite many unknowns — including precisely how the casks containing the deadly waste will be monitored.

The permit is only for 20 years, but critics fear it could be forever.

Opponents blasted the plan, saying it creates “America’s largest beach-front nuclear waste dump” just 100 feet from the plant’s sand and sea wall, and vowed legal action to block it.

Instead, opponents said, the Coastal Commission should demand that Southern California Edison – majority owner of the closed San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station – move spent fuel to the Palo Verde nuclear power plant in Arizona. Edison is a co-owner of that plant. Or, opponents say, the fuel should be moved to a remote spot in the desert, or to a private waste storage facility planned in Texas.

San Onofre’s waste would be safer there, critics insisted. There are simply too many unknowns attendant to burying it for decades in thin, hard-to-monitor steel canisters next to the beach in a densely populated area vulnerable to earthquakes and flooding…….http://www.ocregister.com/articles/coastal-686400-commission-plan.html

October 7, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes