OK of San Onofre plan targeted
Suit challenges the state’s approval of an EIR before a report on spent nuclear fuel.
SAN DIEGO – The San Diego advocacy group Public Watchdogs opened a new front in its legal push to stop millions of pounds of nuclear waste from being buried on the beach north of Oceanside for years to come.
The nonprofit organization filed a lawsuit against the State Lands Commission and is asking a San Diego Superior Court judge to grant an injunction to halt the decommissioning of the shuttered San Onofre nuclear plant.
The complaint, filed last week in the Vista courthouse, accuses the commission of approving a final environmental impact report on the decommissioning project before federal regulators released the findings of an investigation into the handling of spent nuclear fuel.
“The vote went forward on March 21, 2019, just four days before the (U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission) report was made public,” the lawsuit says. “In the report, the NRC cites and penalizes Southern California Edison Co. for violations of federal law concerning defects in the canister-loading process.”
A spokeswoman for the State Lands Commission said the commission does not comment on pending litigation.
Edison, majority owner of the closed plant, began the decommissioning process in 2013. The plan calls for moving the 3.6 million pounds of spent fuel from cooling pools into dry storage canisters so most of the facility can be dismantled.
The fuel-transfer program was halted in August after an accident left a 50ton canister stuck 18 feet above its intended storage vault without any support rigging for nearly an hour.
The resulting NRC review found that most of the canisters installed to date were scratched and gouged, raising questions about their long-term viability. Last month, federal regulators issued a $116,000 civil penalty against the utility for violating rules governing the fuel transfers.
The NRC has yet to allow Edison to restart the program moving the spent fuel from wet to dry storage.
But Public Watchdogs said it is afraid the utility will rely on the State Lands Commission’s approval of the final EIR to begin deconstructing the cooling pools, and remove any alternative to the dry storage program they worry is unsafe.
“The NRC report contained findings that call into question the integrity of the entire project,” board member Nina Babiarz said in a statement. “Therefore, the vote was ‘speculative,’ which flies in the face of CEQA law and the mission of the State Lands Commission.”
“CEQA” is an acronym for the California Environmental Quality Act, which works to mitigate adverse environmental effects of developments and other projects. The 15-page complaint names the NRC, Edison, minority owner San Diego Gas & Electric and others as parties to the claim because they are entities involved in decommissioning the nuclear plant.
The NRC declined to comment on the suit. Edison said the state properly reviewed and certified the EIR and said “completing the decommissioning work at San Onofre nuclear plant in a timely manner benefits our customers, our local communities and the landowners.”
The plant was built in the 1960s on land owned by the U.S. Navy, which is scheduled to resume control of the property — except for the dry storage site — after decommissioning is completed.
One of the attorneys representing Public Watchdogs in the San Onofre litigation is well known in San Diego. Charles La Bella is a longtime federal prosecutor who formerly served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California.