Public Watchdogs files motion in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals: Asks court to halt nuclear waste burials until SONGS has a better plan
Public Watchdogs insists on a new decommissioning plan recognizing the reality of permanent storage of nuclear waste at San Onofre
Dateline San Diego California, Wednesday 04-01-20 — Yesterday, Public Watchdogs filed a Motion for Temporary Injunctive relief with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The motion requests an immediate halt to all decommissioning activities until Southern California Edison develops a new decommissioning plan for its failed San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS).
In September of 2019, Public Watchdogs filed a petition with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to revoke Edison’s high-speed race to package and store millions of pounds of solid radioactive nuclear waste at the shuttered nuclear power plant.
The Public Watchdogs motion for temporary injunctive relief asks the 9th Circuit to immediately halt all decommissioning activities at SONGS and require the majority owner of the nuclear waste, Southern California Edison, to jettison its temporary plan, and submit a new plan that recognizes the fact that spent nuclear fuel will be buried at SONGS indefinitely.
“Edison is out of touch with reality. The radioactive waste at SONGS will be stored on the beach for many generations, perhaps hundreds of years. There will be no national nuclear waste repository for decades. Edison’s current plan is a temporary fix for a permanent problem.” says Nina Babiarz, a Public Watchdogs Board Member.
According to Public Watchdogs’ Executive Director, Charles Langley, “SONGS has a long history of operational failures due to an unsafe corporate safety culture. Southern California Edison should be required to draft a new plan that recognizes that this deadly radioactive waste is probably going to stay on the beach for at least 100-years. Yet, Edison is telling the public and regulators that they could be moving it in just a few years. That claim is deceptive.”
The SONGS nuclear waste dump is located 108 feet from the Pacific Ocean. The dump, known as an “Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation,” or “ISFSI” has been designed for the temporary storage of solid nuclear waste.
The nuclear waste at SONGS is radioactive and deadly for at least 250,000 years. Once it is completed, SONGS will be the largest privately owned and operated nuclear waste dump in the U.S.A.