The San Diego County Board of Supervisors is urging the federal government get the nuclear waste left behind in the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) decommissioning out of San Diego County.
The board voted 4-0 Tuesday to send their concerns in a letter to the U.S. Department of Energy. Supervisor Greg Cox recused himself from the issue.
The plant, which sits in the northernmost part of San Diego County, was closed in 2012 after a radiation leak led officials to discover damage to hundreds of tubes inside virtually new steam generators.
As SONGS is slowly taken out of commission, nuclear waste is still being stored in the facility, vulnerable to an earthquake, natural disaster or terrorist attack, according to Supervisor Dianne Jacob.
“As long as all that radioactive waste sits at San Onofre, it poses a serious risk to San Diegans and millions of other Southern Californians,” said Jacob in her comments to the board.
The Energy Department has, in the past, talked about a long-term plan to store the spent fuel. Now is the time to formulate a permanent strategy and put it into action, the supervisor said.
In April, Southern California Edison, the utility that oversaw SONGS, said a contracted company has moved about one-third of the waste into dry cask storage containers until the federal government decides what to do with it. The remaining fuel should be transferred into storage and buried by mid-2019.
