Issa calls for feds to add hearing on San Onofre

North County Congressman Darrell Issa wants the U.S. Department of Energy to add a Southern California site to its list of cities hosting public forums on nuclear waste storage.

"With the San Onofre nuclear facility at the front of Southern Californians' minds, it makes zero sense that the Department of Energy wouldn't seek to hear from us on how to address nuclear waste storage and disposal," Issa, (R-Vista) said in a statement Tuesday.

Controversial plans to store more than 3.6 million pounds of high-level waste at the now-shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station along the Pacific Ocean have raised fears and spurred protests from some of the more than 8 million people who live in the region.

Last month the Department of Energy announced it was launching an eight-city tour across the country to develop what DOE called "a consent-based approach to siting that is fair and reflective of public input."

Sacramento was selected as the only city on the West Coast, prompting Issa to send a letter Tuesday to DOE Secretary
Ernest Moniz, to "respectfully request you add an additional public meeting" near the San Onofre facility.

The Sacramento meeting is set for April 26.

A DOE spokesman confirmed the agency had received the letter and is reviewing it.

David Victor, chairman of the Community Engagement Panel, which acts as a liaison between the public and the various interests at SONGS, said he'd like to see a Southern California site added to the DOE listening tour.

"I think the more input to DOE, the better," Victor told the Union-Tribune.

Victor has been calling for federal action on what's called "consolidated interim storage" for nuclear waste and Issa is a co-sponsor of legislation on Capitol Hill promoting the effort.

With plans for a huge underground storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada scrapped, spent nuclear fuel is being stored at various sites across the country on an indefinite basis.

Under a system of consolidated interim storage, sites would be built on dozens of isolated locations like the desert where multiple plants could deposit waste.

Victor said DOE should not just hear from areas that may eventually store or transport nuclear waste "but it's also crucially important that DOE get input from communities that want to get spent fuel out of their communities. The San Onofre communities are really at the top of that list."

Donna Gilmore, a San Clemente resident who hosts a website sharply critical of SONGS management, and the facility's majority stakeholder, Southern California Edison, said, "the more meetings the better."

But Gilmore said her chief concern is the safety of the canisters on the SONGS site.

"These canisters could start leaking before you could even get it out of here," she said.

SONGS officials insist the canisters are safe.

Last October, the California Coastal Commission approved a site permit to store the waste in concrete casks within 125 feet of a seawall and the beach on a low-lying plain.

Companies in West Texas and eastern New Mexico have been discussed as possible contenders to take the SONGS waste but those facilities still need to pass through the painstaking approval process, which takes years.

Many who live near SONGS have called for moving the waste as soon as possible but without DOE or legislative action, it cannot be moved.

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