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Title: As Part of California's Coast Begins to Crumble, Is the Clock Ticking
on Moving Radioactive Waste?

Link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/09/14/...

"As parts of the Southern California coastline crumbled into the sea, slammed
by intense waves and flooding in recent days, oceanographer Kim McCoy had one
thing on his mind," reports the Los Angeles Times. He was thinking about "the
nuclear waste set in concrete on the beach near San Clemente at the shuttered
San Onofre nuclear power plant." "Rising sea levels, storm waves, El Ni�o
which increases wave height ... these could wash away a section of the
walkway that protects the San Onofre seawall, and the waste canisters are
just 100 feet away from that," the former wave dynamics researcher and
longtime advocate against beach storage of nuclear waste said. Most experts
agree the risk of erosion damaging the nuclear waste storage system is
extremely low in the near term. The plant's owner, Southern California
Edison, has promised the California Coastal Commission to move the waste to
higher elevation on-site if modeling shows sea level rise and erosion will
start to pose a challenge. But the recent waves, fueled by Hurricane Marie
far away in the Pacific, resurfaced the issue of the ultimate fate of the
highly radioactive spent fuel that used to power the reactors. "At the
moment, it is under control, I think it's essential to say that," said James
Day, a geology professor at UC San Diego. "But geologically we must be
thinking long term. The waste lasts for hundreds, if not thousands of
generations...." [In 2103 some of the site's canisters' approach their
intended 100-year lifespans, and the utility may have to start the transfer
into new cansiters.] The distinctive twin domes that once housed the reactor
cores will start coming down early next year. But the 3.6 million pounds of
high-level waste will stay in the coastal community indefinitely. How much of
a safety hazard that is depends on whom you ask. "San Onofre is sitting on
some fairly young rocks in a seismically active region," Day said at a recent
symposium at the Scripps Seaside Forum in La Jolla, hosted by the Samuel
Lawrence Foundation. "This is not the sort of place you would leave nuclear
waste." Others noted that collapse of beach slopes could make the site more
vulnerable to tsunamis. They spoke of the corrosive effects of the ocean air
on the steel canisters that hold the waste... Edison says its system will be
safe for decades to come. "The maximum credible tsunami here would not even
overtake the seawall," said Manuel Camargo, principal manager of
decommissioning for Edison, standing on the concrete pad that holds the steel
waste storage canisters. "The maximum credible earthquake, somewhere around a
7.0 magnitude, would produce something about half of what this system is
designed to withstand...." Edison is bolstering a path below the seawall.
Based on state data from the California Ocean Protection Council, the seawall
would not be inundated before 2050, Camargo said... Plans for a deep
geological repository beneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada crumbled in the face
of local opposition in 2011. Utilities around the U.S. now sue the federal
government every year to recoup their storage expenses because the Department
of Energy has not come through on its promise. The lawsuits cost taxpayers $2
million a day, according to Camargo. "It's so safe that it's almost a
problem," Camargo said. "It's not a priority to a lot of folks to move it."
"The Trump administration's Department of Energy wants to create 'campuses'
in several states to store waste," the article points out, "and, in exchange,
give local jurisdictions funding to develop different aspects of the nuclear
cycle - such as fuel creation, power generation and potentially fuel
recycling..." "The administration wants to address the fact that waste is
sitting at 80 reactor sites around the country. It also needs places for
waste from new reactors it wants to build."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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