Doomsday scenario: Terrorists commandeer a 747 and crash it into San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station’s dry waste storage pad.

Are we all going to die?

Well, yes, someday. But probably not from this.

Before we address the outright nonsense we heard, let us extend kudos to the good city of Irvine for its “high-stakes Study Session addressing public health and safety” on Sept. 30. During this meeting it was insisted that we create a “Plan B” for the 3.6 million pounds of highly radioactive nuclear waste that’s currently stranded on a scenic bluff over the blue Pacific, in an earthquake zone, close to 8 million people.

Larry Agran at an Irvine City Council meeting in 2023. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Irvine Mayor Larry Agran — and, frankly, many others, including yours truly — have little faith in the federal government’s ability to find a permanent home for commercial nuclear waste. The feds vowed to start taking possession of it back in, er, 1982, with the first pickups to begin in 1998. Alas, as of 2025, the feds haven’t accepted a single ounce of commercial waste for permanent disposal, even after collecting more than $40 billion from ratepayers for that purpose and spending more than $11 billion on moribund Yucca Mountain.

Agran, who has a talent for stirring the pot, proposes a simple (if expensive) alternative to San O’s current “beachfront nuclear waste dump:” Move it to higher ground on Camp Pendleton, on the east side of Interstate 5, away from king tides and tsunami threats (no matter how remote those threats may actually be).

“The top priority of government at any level is to keep people safe,” Agran said, calling on other cities to join his in advocating for Plan B.

Important: The Navy has already nixed this idea. But the current administration is hellbent on a nuclear renaissance, so maybe the Navy will change its mind?

Anyway, about two dozen governments, and nearly as many businesses and nonprofits, have already formed the Spent Fuel Solutions Coalition as a way to goose the government to action. Irvine is a member. And while that group is politely working the system — U.S. Rep. Mike Levin, D-San Juan Capistrano, has helped secure funding to pursue collaboration with communities that want to host permanent disposal sites — Agran is saying something like, “We can’t wait for the feds to save us; we have to save ourselves!”

Dr. Greg Jaczko, former Chair of the National Regulatory Committee under the Obama administration, listens to public comments during a special meeting before the Irvine City Council to discuss public safety regarding the spent nuclear fuel stored at the San Onofre nuclear generating station in Irvine on Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The former chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would agree. “One of the biggest policy mistakes was when the federal government assumed responsibility for the ultimate disposal of commercial nuclear fuel,” said Gregory Jaczko. “That has led to what we have today. Unwillingness for anyone to move forward and take responsibility.

“Additional efforts at the local level can help move forward on a solution,” he said.

And the bluff at San Onofre, he added, “is not and never will be appropriate for the permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel.”

But while blame and vitriol are (rightfully) heaped on the federal government for its paralysis, “no nuclear spent fuel owner lacks the ability to act independently,” Jaczko said. “Why not turn the question around and say, ‘How can we move spent fuel sooner? Is there value in starting to formulate a plan to address that problem?’ “

Jaczko thinks there is. Agran, and other councilmembers, agree.

Risk?

Kudos, again, to Irvine for letting independent experts explore the realistic risks posed by the accidental release of radiation from spent nuclear fuel.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office’s map of sites storing spent nuclear waste in the United States.

If a fraction of 1% of what’s at San Onofre was released, it would create a relatively large problem, said David B. Richardson, professor of environmental and occupational health (and associate dean of research) at UCI.

“But here’s the paradox — it would almost be imperceptible to an individual person,” he said. “Small risk over a large population can have really substantial impacts.”

Currently, about 1 in 6 of us will eventually die of cancer, Richardson said. Radiation exposure could change that to 1 in 5.5. And radiation’s effects are magnified in children (who are still growing). “We can’t say ‘there’s no impact.’ And, all things being equal, we’d like to avoid it,” he said.

Risks can be reduced by early interventions, and harm can be mitigated with planning, he said.

Southern California Edison, which runs San O, said (for the umpteenth time) that the waste is — and will remain — safely managed. Canisters of radioactive pellets are encased in NRC-licensed steel-and-concrete structures several feet thick. Some of it has been there more than 20 years, and one of the two dry storage systems has already been relicensed. Aging management programs aim to keep an eye on the most likely issues — stress corrosion cracks in the canisters — and robots have been developed to spot corrosion and repair it before cracks can develop.

Southern California Edison’s Media Relations Manager, John Dobken, shows simulated nuclear fuel pellets like the ones stored inside canisters at San Onofre’s dry fuel storage facility. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Nuclear experts have likened this to more of a safety strobe light than a safety spotlight, as only a small sample of canisters get inspected. But that could change as the systems age.

There’s no credible scenario that could result in a radiation release beyond the site, said Frederic Bailly, Edison’s vice president of generation and chief nuclear officer. That’s not just Edison’s conclusion; it’s the NRC’s as well, he said.

Still, Edison says it’s engaged.

“We are not satisfied with the status quo,” said Manuel C. Camargo Jr., Edison’s principal manager of decommissioning. “That’s why we are highly motivated to get the spent fuel off site and restore the land to the Navy.”

Other countries, including Finland, Sweden, Canada and France, have been more successful at finding homes for nuclear waste by collaborating with willing communities, he said. We’ve known exactly what to do with nuclear waste for years — bury it forever in deep geologic repositories, as we currently do with the government’s atomic bomb waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.

“Salt formations at WIPP were deposited in thick beds during the evaporation of an ancient ocean,” the site explains. “These geologic formations consist mainly of sodium chloride rock, the same substance that, in granular form, is in a salt shaker. The primary salt formation containing the WIPP repository is about 2,000 feet thick, beginning 850 feet below the surface.

“Formed about 250 million years ago during the Permian Era (before dinosaurs), large expanses of uninterrupted salt beds provide a setting free from the disturbances of large earthquakes. Proven stability over such a long time span ensures that a repository within the salt formation will remain stable for the time it will take for WIPP-bound waste to lose most of its radioactivity.

A detail of a display of a nuclear fuel assembly shows the rods and pellets that were used in the decommissioned San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Clemente, CA. Officials gave a media tour on Monday, March 18, 2019. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Right now, though, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires that commercial waste be retrievable. The law would have to change to bury it for good and forever. Let’s do that.

‘China Syndrome’ and other nonsense

While Irvine took a sober tack in its background spiel about the meeting — “Spent nuclear fuel at San Onofre threatens public health and safety in Orange County, San Diego County, and beyond. With 123 aging canisters situated just 100 feet from the shoreline, experts warn of growing risk from corrosion, environmental disasters, and potential contamination events” — public comments descended into the malarky.

– A councilman evoked the fictional meltdown in “The China Syndrome” from the dais. Please, people. Analogies to Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island are just plain ridiculous. Those plants were actively splitting atoms. They suffered catastrophic accidents leading to severe overheating of their reactor cores, which melted fuel. Such a scenario is impossible at San Onofre, which hasn’t split atoms since 2012. Its reactors are in pieces, its fuel has been cooling for at least a decade, and is in passive dry storage. There’s just no analogous scenario and it’s alarmist to suggest otherwise.

Structures beside the containment domes at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station come down (Courtesy Southern California Edison)

-Terrorism? Sabotage? Canister failure? Experts have explored San Onofre doomsday scenarios and warned that “unhelpful dread and anxiety” can lead to bad decision-making. To simulate the impact of a high-speed 747 aircraft on dry storage systems, steel slugs weighing 110 pounds were fired from a 155-mm cannon at simulated waste overpacks. The slugs penetrated several feet into the overpacks, but didn’t completely penetrate the canisters that might result in a big release of radioactive material. “Jet fuel fires from aircraft attacks would likely be dispersed and of short duration,” an expert said at the 2020 doomsday meeting. In a different simulation, a shaped-charge anti-tank weapon (an explosive device designed to focus blast energy) was fired at a cast-iron cask containing nuclear waste. The bare cask was breached, but the cask within a concrete jacket, or overpack, was not breached. Material could be released from a bare cask, but precisely how much would depend on the number of damaged fuel elements and other factors. “No dry storage system provides complete protection, but any radioactive material releases from attacks would be relatively small,” an expert said.

-If someone dropped a bomb powerful enough to destroy the dry storage systems, we’d have a much bigger problem than spent nuclear fuel, experts have said.

-Speakers asserted that the waste canisters cannot be moved. That’s not true. They were moved once already — from the spent fuel pools to the dry storage system — and they’re designed to be popped into an overpack for eventual transportation to… well, wherever, once we figure that out. Radioactive waste has been moving for years. There’s even a rail car designed just for that.

..On Thursday, April 21, 2022 in Pendleton, CA., Randall Granaas, Senior Nuclear Engineer at Southern California Edison earlier used an RO-2 device to measure radiation from one of the dry storage containers in the secure location where all spent nuclear fuel from San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is stored. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

-Complaints about “thin-walled” canisters have been raised for more than a decade. The canisters are not sitting out on shelves like wine bottles; they’re encased in several feet of steel and concrete.

A paddle-out to protest against the waste is slated for Oct. 11 from 9:30 AM to 12:30 PM at San Clemente State Beach, south of the pier. The waste, its storage and an initiative to relocate it offsite will be discussed at San Onofre’s volunteer Community Engagement Panel meeting from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Oct. 16. It will be held at The Casino, 140 Avenida Pico, San Clemente, and streamed via Microsoft Teams. See http://bit.ly/3IEj1Yi for details. Edison is expected to present more photos of canister inspections, which activists have been demanding.

Let’s all agree that we have to get the waste the heck out of here as soon as possible. lrvine will revisit the issue in a couple of months, perhaps pushing forward a study on what it would take to relocate San Onofre’s waste to higher ground on Camp Pendleton. That might be better than where it is. But the stuff should leave SoCal, and its 8 million people, as soon as humanly possible.