Environmentalists Assailing San Onofre’s 9-Year Extension

Enraging environmentalists, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week agreed to extend the life of the San Onofre nuclear power plant until 2022--nine years beyond the date it was to retire.

Activists say plant operator Southern California Edison won the extension without effective public notice or proof that the action is safe. Regulatory and plant officials disagree, and they say such an extension simply allows the plant to recapture time lost during construction.

“It’s a relatively common practice in the industry. More than 60 plants have done this before us,” said Edison spokesman Ray Golden.

The extension was granted Thursday for Units II and III at San Onofre, which provide energy for 2.5 million homes and businesses. Along with Unit I, which was shut down in 1992, the two 1,120-megawatt reactors constitute the second-largest nuclear plant in the country. The plant hugs the coast just south of the San Diego County line.

Both units received 40-year operational licenses in 1973. Because of construction delays, however, Unit II didn’t become operational until 1983 and Unit III started a year later. Such delays were common for nuclear power plants nationwide after the 1979 partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant near Harrisburg, Pa.

“When Three Mile Island took place, the NRC . . . took another look at safety regulations,” said Breck Henderson, a spokesman for the commission. The result was a heavier emphasis on redundant safety systems, emergency diesel generators and other security measures.

The commission now issues separate construction and operation licenses to prevent such delays from cutting into plants’ operational time. For dozens of plants in the same situation facing San Onofre, the commission began in the 1990s to routinely extend licenses to compensate for lost time.

“You just have to show that your 40-year [license] didn’t start at the right point,” Henderson said. “It was never meant to cover construction. It’s a fairly routine issue.”

But environmentalists say the extension of San Onofre’s licenses is anything but routine.

The commission “should have done a complete review of the safety of the facility,” said Don May, president of California Earth Corps and an opponent of the plant for more than three decades. “It’s way more risky than it was back in 1970.”

He said the commission failed to consider several safety questions that had not yet arisen when the licenses were first issued--such as deteriorating pipelines in the cooling systems and recent seismic activity at a fault that runs near the plant.

However, plant spokesman Golden denied those are issues.

“I don’t know what he’s talking about there,” Golden said. “It’s our responsibility as the owner and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s responsibility as the regulator to ensure the safety of the plant.”

Henderson said the commission did do a cursory review of risks and concluded that there were no significant concerns to prevent extending the operational license.

Activists also say Edison plant officials misled the public by telling the California Coastal Commission in February--two months after applying for the extension--that the plant would close in 2013 as scheduled.

Golden said officials did not lie. “The plant at the time . . . was licensed to 2013 and that was what we provided in testimony,” Golden said.

Though information about the commission’s consideration of an extension was published in the Federal Register, many activists were unaware of the application or the decision.

Edison officials “don’t care about the public,” said Mark Massara, a Sierra Club attorney and director of the group’s coastal programs. “They only care about lining their own pockets.”

Regardless of Thursday’s extension, Golden said, Edison will operate the plant only if it remains economical and may shut it down before 2022. The plant also could apply for an additional 20-year extension, which would require considerable research.

In any case, the power plant’s presence at the beach will not end any time soon. Spent uranium from Units II and III will be stored there until at least 2050.