Nervous North County residents met with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Thursday for one of several public meetings about the dismantling of the San Onofre Generating Station.
San Onofre once provided Southern California with 20 percent of its power.
Then a leak in one of the reactors led to the decision to decommission the plant.
Now that it's closed the question on many minds - will it remain a safe place?
The NRC will tell you San Onofre has had its mishaps. There was a leak while transporting the remains of reactor one in the 1980's. Another non-injury leak in a second reactor on site occurred last January that lead to the decision to decommission the plant.
Members of Residents Organized for a Safe Environment (ROSE) based in San Diego joined approximately 100 others Thursday, on the edge of their seats listening to the NRC's plan
“Just because San Onofre is closed doesn't mean we are safe,” ROSE member Madge Torres said.
Because at the moment there is no safe storage off-site, radiated spent fuels will be stored at San Onofre in specially designed containers to withstand Tsunami flooding and earthquakes.
“Maybe if it were underground in berms many hundreds of feet underground then I would feel like those storage casks were safe from attack or tsunami,” Torres said.
Decommissioning the plant could take 10 to 15 years and cost more than $4 billion dollars. At the moment Southern California Edison is about $500 million short but still within NRC guidelines.
“We will be her overseeing the decommissioning process to ensure that it's done safely,” NRC spokesperson Victor Dricks said.
Despite a shortfall at the moment Southern California Edison says the cost of closing will not be passed on to the consumer.
More public meetings are expected at specific steps in this process.
