{"id":19186,"date":"2025-10-23T08:08:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T08:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/19186\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T08:08:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T08:08:09","slug":"photos-released-of-canisters-holding-san-onofre-nuclear-waste-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/19186\/","title":{"rendered":"Photos released of canisters holding San Onofre nuclear waste \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

Southern California Edison, the utility that operates the now-shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, has released to the public<\/a> some 1,749 images taken by robotic cameras during inspections of canisters enclosed in casks that store radioactive waste at the plant.<\/p>\n

The photos show dust, scratches, stains and streaking from rainwater but Edison officials say the stainless steel canisters have not suffered damage or stress corrosion cracking that could pose a safety risk to the public.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur canisters are as dry as King Tut\u2019s tomb,\u201d Jerry Stephenson, Southern California Edison\u2019s engineering manager, said last week during a seminar in San Clemente hosted by the utility\u2019s Community Engagement Panel.<\/p>\n

Stephenson said \u201call the canisters are in good condition,\u201d don\u2019t require any repairs, \u201cwill last a very long time\u201d and many of the scratches are merely the width \u201cof three sheets of copy paper.\u201d<\/p>\n

The seminar also included a presentation by James Burns, a professor of engineering at the University of Virginia<\/a> who has done work for NASA and the federal government, to provide third-party expertise.<\/p>\n

A select number of canisters are inspected periodically through a protocol called the Aging Management Program at the San Onofre facility, or SONGS for short. <\/p>\n

\u201cWith the inspections that are being done and the ability to be responsive to those inspections, I think (the canisters at San Onofre) can be continued to operate in that paradigm indefinitely,\u201d said Burns, who joined by remote video.<\/p>\n

Two canisters are inspected every five years under the Aging Management Program. Thus far, 10 have been inspected from a site at the north end of SONGS that holds the canisters in vertical cavities. Two others have been inspected at an adjacent storage site that holds canisters horizontally.<\/p>\n

\"AA scratch on one of the canisters at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, as detected from an inspection done by robotic camera. (Southern California Edison)<\/p>\n

Edison\u2019s release of the 1,749 images came after a request from Gary Headrick, a longtime attendee of Community Engagement Panels and co-founder of the environmental group San Clemente Green<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what trust looks like,\u201d Headrick said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about showing pictures, it\u2019s about showing good faith. When the public and the experts can look at the same facts together without filters or secrecy, that\u2019s when real safety begins.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others still voiced concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cSan Onofre has become a de facto nuclear waste dump site for the foreseeable future,\u201d said Alice McNally of Del Mar. \u201cSpent nuclear fuel is the most toxic material known to man and remains active for hundreds of thousands of years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Charles Langley, executive director at Public Watchdogs<\/a> and a longtime critic of Edison\u2019s management at SONGS, said he was bothered by the number of canisters with marks on them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI question their analysis of the health of those containers, based on the photographs that they provided,\u201d Langley said in a phone interview this week. \u201cThe other thing that was troubling was that these so-called scratches look like really deep gouges in some of the photos.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although SONGS is being decommissioned and has not produced electricity since 2012 after a leak in a steam generator tube led to its closing, 3.55 million pounds of spent fuel are stored at the site.<\/p>\n

The plant is in the sixth year of dismantling above-ground structures, which is scheduled to wrap up by the end of 2028.<\/p>\n

All told, there are 123 canisters of nuclear waste at SONGS, dating from the time when the plant produced electricity. Another 12 canisters are filled with radioactive debris from the dismantlement work. The canisters rest a little more than 100 feet from the Pacific, protected by a seawall.<\/p>\n

SONGS is hardly unique. Roughly 91,000 metric tons<\/a> of spent fuel that has accumulated over the years by commercial nuclear power plants in 35 states<\/a> are stored in similar fashion at plants across the country.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because the federal government has not found a place for the waste to go.<\/p>\n

Yucca Mountain in Nevada had been slated as a permanent waste site but the Obama administration\u00a0cut off funding for Yucca in 2010<\/a>, after years of protests from lawmakers in the Silver State who had long opposed the project.<\/p>\n

With Yucca off the table, federal officials have gone back to the drawing board, looking at potential sites to accept some or all of the country\u2019s commercial spent fuel, either on an interim (still-to-be-determined period) or permanent basis.<\/p>\n

Last week\u2019s seminar by Edison came on the heels of a recent session of the Irvine City Council convened by Mayor Larry Agran, who called on his colleagues to adopt a \u201cPlan B\u201d to study the SONGS nuclear waste issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need a local plan that once implemented, would safeguard us in Southern California for 100 years or more, even if no federal repository is forthcoming,\u201d Agran said, according to the Orange County Register<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Agran has suggested moving the canisters at SONGS to higher ground on the inland side of Interstate 5 at Camp Pendleton to better protect them from floods, earthquakes, tsunamis or potential terrorist attacks.<\/p>\n

But at the Oct. 16 seminar, Southern California Edison vice president and chief nuclear officer Frederic Bailly<\/a> said the canisters don\u2019t need to be moved. \u201cIt is safely stored now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Originally Published: October 22, 2025 at 11:47 AM PDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Southern California Edison, the utility that operates the now-shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, has released to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[387,6774,181,74,76,75,1696],"class_list":{"0":"post-19186","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-energy","10":"tag-latest-headlines","11":"tag-san-diego","12":"tag-san-diego-headlines","13":"tag-san-diego-news","14":"tag-top-stories-sdut"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}