What's the status of other radioactive material at SONGS? The ISFSI however, will remain trapped onsite indefinitely, until there is federal action. SCE is now in the process of disassembling and dismantling the majority of above ground structures onsite, including the domes, cooling pools, support buildings and more ( learn more here). The transfer process from pools to canisters was completed in 2020. This allowed for the transfer of spent fuel assemblies from the cooling pools, where they previously resided for decades longer than the pools were designed for, to dry storage casks or “canisters”, which are steel cylinders filled with inert gas and placed into a concrete “monoloth”. This facility was constructed at SONGS in 2017 and waste began the transfer to the ISFSI in early 2018. In October 2016, the California Coastal Commission approved an application by Southern California Edison (SCE) to store radioactive waste at SONGS in an onsite independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI). There are several decommissioned nuclear facilities waiting for approved final resting places for their spent nuclear fuel.

San Onofre is not the only nuclear facility going through the decommissioning process. Second, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission must designate a secure offsite location for safe long-term storage of nuclear material, and no such site presently exists in the United States. It is not yet feasible nor safe to move all of the canisters containing spent fuel, which require a minimum cooling period of about five years (though some fuel requires more time). First, nuclear spent fuel requires time to cool off, decrease its radioactivity and increase its stability, before being able to be transfered to more secure storage and eventually transported to an offsite storage location. There are two very significant reasons why the spent fuel is still being stored onsite at San Onofre. Why hasn’t the radioactive waste been moved? Although the plant was permanently retired in 2013, it is still home to the radioactive material (spent fuel rods, liquid waste, contaminated debris) that helped feed Southern California’s energy demand for the last 45-plus years. Locating a nuclear power plant at this site was a bad idea from the start. Likewise, its location in highly populated Southern California has not changed since the first unit began operation in 1968. SONGS has always been exposed to the risks of earthquakes (the Newport-Inglewood-Rose Canyon fault zone lies just offshore), bluff erosion, storm surge and wave events.

SONGS is located on a coastal bluff in between two sections of San Onofre State Beach, just south of San Clemente, California. Take Action now! Click here to contact your federal representatives. Surfrider is actively engaged in advocating to remove the waste as quickly as possible to a federally approved, geologically secure, consent based permanent repository within a specific timeline. Nearly 8 million people reside in the vicinity, and it is directly adjacent to one of the United States’ busiest highways. Surfrider is opposed to permanent or long-term storage of radioactive waste at the deactivated San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) due to its proximity to the coastline, susceptibility to geological instability and location within a densely populated area.

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