Decommissioning of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station
Posted on Mar 09, 2017
Jerry Kern, Oceanside Councilman, was the evening's speaker and he spoke on a legislative update on the Decommissioning of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. After providing a history, he talked about used nuclear fuel management, priorities and community engagement, enabling federal legislation and state-level transportation planning.
After serving in the Air Force overseas, Jerry got his BS in Business Administration from SDSU. After being an educator for several years, Jerry was elected to Oceanside City Council in 2006 and is currently serving his third term. He is a member of the community engagement panel. He plans to run for a seat on the North County Board of Supervisors, District 5.
Southern California Edison and the co-owners are committed to safely de-commissioning San Onofre, moving the used fuel into dry cask storage until government approved long-term storage options are available. They are planning to leave the local communities better off, spend the Nuclear Trust Funds wisely and returning any unused money to tax payers. The process is inclusive, forward-thinking and involved diverse stakeholders.
The Used Fuel Management strategy supports all safe and reasonable options to remove used fuel from the site, promptly offloading fuel from pools to passive, dry cask storage, recovering costs from DOE.
The Community Engagement Panel meets quarterly. There are Decommissioning Education Fairs, SONGS VIP Tours, public walking tours, meetings with homeowners associations, schools, and news media.
Priorities are: Safety, transfer of fuel from wet to dry storage, development of aging management programs, used fuel storage defense-in-depth. Stewardship is by California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
SONGS Community Website: http://www.songscommunity.com