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Officials at San Onofre conspicuously silent on the risks of tsunami waves to nuclear waste storage.

The tsunami advisory that woke up the West Coast Jan. 15 should serve as a wake-up call on flooding dangers at the nuclear waste storage facility in San Onofre. The facility is 100 feet from the beach.

During high tides, waves crash into an aging bulkhead that separates the sea from the storage
vault — a kind of crypt that holds 73 thin-walled, metal canisters jam-packed with 3.6 million pounds of deadly, radioactive waste.

According to Southern California Edison, the sprawling, concrete vault will flood from a storm at high tide. If the ocean were to swamp the so-called Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation, we could have an unsurpassed disaster on our hands, an uncontrolled criticality, one that has never occurred in the U.S. commercial power industry.

The undersea volcanic eruption this month near Tonga sent waves across the Pacific. Officials in
Hawaii reported tsunami wave heights of nearly 3 feet. At San Diego Harbor, officials measured more than a half-foot of sea level rise. Meanwhile, officials from shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station remained conspicuously silent.

 Times of San Diego 20th Jan 2022

January 24, 2022 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, safety, USA