Should Laguna worry about Onofre’s stored nuclear fuel rods?

First in a two-part series on the storage of used radioactive fuel at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

Concerns about the safety of spent fuel rods being stored at the shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station have inspired action by residents and city officials in Laguna Beach, which lies 20 miles north of the plant.

Residents fear a nuclear disaster could result from a terrorist attack, earthquake or fire.

But the chance of a catastrophe at the site is minuscule, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Nonetheless, community group Let Laguna Vote organized a letter-writing campaign in early January urging the NRC, Department of Defense and the Department of Energy to remove the spent fuel.

And city officials adopted a resolution last month insisting the fuel — ceramic pellets made of uranium oxide that are stored in metal rods — be removed as soon as possible from San Onofre, which was closed in June 2013 as a result of faulty steam generators.

Southern California Edison’s emergency management plan for San Onofre, made public last month, said a leak from a pool that cools radioactive matter is one of the most realistic, though unlikely, disaster scenarios.

Edison, which owns 80% of the plant, is holding used nuclear fuel on-site in steel-lined pools or encased in concrete casks, waiting, as are other plant operators across the country, for the U.S. Department of Energy to designate a permanent disposal site.

This month marks three years since Edison shut down its final two reactors, one of which leaked radioactive coolant in January 2012.

When a plant shuts down, used fuel is taken from the reactor and placed in a pool of water to cool for five to seven years. The fuel rods are covered by 23 feet of water at San Onofre, which has two pools.

Officials monitor water levels and airborne radioactivity daily, Edison Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer Tom Palmisano said.

After the fuel rods have sufficient time to cool, they are moved into concrete canisters, a procedure called dry cask storage.

If a leak were to occur in one of the pools, and the rods were exposed to air, it would take at least 10 hours for the fuel to heat up to 900 degrees Celsius, a temperature at which a fire could occur, the NRC report says.

Ten hours is sufficient time to refill the pools using water pumps on site, Edison spokeswoman Maureen Brown wrote in an email.

Such leaks would be rare. Spent fuel rod pools did not leak from the Fukushima nuclear plant even after the 9.0-magnitude temblor off the Japan coast in 2011, according to the NRC report.

The Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research performed a study in October 2013 for the NRC and estimated the effect on spent fuel rod pools at the Peach Bottom Nuclear Generating Station in Pennsylvania from an earthquake with greater ground shaking than the one felt in Japan. The study showed no leakage.

“The likelihood of a radiological release from the spent fuel after the severe earthquake at the [Peach Bottom] plant is about one time in 10 million years or lower,” according to the 2013 report. “The study also showed that the risk of an individual dying from cancer from the radioactive release is very low. The risk in the analyzed scenarios that an average individual within 10 miles receives a fatal latent cancer is between about two in a trillion and five in a hundred billion per year.”

But Let Laguna Vote Chairwoman Rita Conn said one can’t be too careful when it comes to nuclear fuel.

“No matter how safe a design, there are always random, unplanned events that can’t be imagined,” she said. “We feel like the Department of Defense should guard this as it guards its weapons. The stakes are too high.”

Conn said a U.S. Council on Foreign Relations article, “Targets for Terrorism: Nuclear Facilities,” outlines potential threats to nuclear power plants.

“In his 2002 January State of the Union speech, President [George] Bush said U.S. forces found diagrams of American nuclear power plants in al-Qaida materials in Afghanistan,” according to the council’s article.

U.S. Homeland Security planners are most concerned about the following scenarios: a nuclear plant being hit with a bomb delivered by a truck or boat; a plane crashing into a nuclear facility; and sabotage by an insider or by intruders.

Brown said nuclear plants take the highest security precautions.

“Nuclear plants are extremely robust and are probably one of the most secure facilities in the nation,” she said. “Tests have been done that demonstrate the ability to withstand certain forces, including an airplane.”