SAN ONOFRE ---- Talk about the long way around.

Southern California Edison Co. officials say they may be forced to send their retired nuclear reactor around the world, a journey of more than 20,000 miles, to move it from the San Onofre nuclear power plant north of Oceanside to the only available dump in Barnwell, S.C.

The round-the-world route is one of several options Edison is considering, company spokesman Ray Golden said this week. Each option has bureaucratic hoops to jump through and deadlines to meet, and so far Edison has had little success.

It's likely to be at least a year ---- or even as long as a century ---- before the reactor reaches its final resting place.

First there was the railroad. Edison originally planned to send the reactor vessel by rail from San Onofre to the Camp Pendleton harbor on the first leg of its journey. But Burlington, Northern and Santa Fe officials said no, citing concerns about the size, weight and insurance liabilities of the shipment. The railroad would have required Edison to insure against as much as a month's loss of commerce on the line, an amount Edison officials described only as prohibitive.

Plan B was to move the retired nuclear reactor down old Highway 101 and more than 8 miles of Camp Pendleton beach, load it on a barge in the Camp Pendleton harbor, and tow the barge through the Panama Canal to the East Coast. But the Panama Canal Authority has said no, because the 950-ton reactor vessel with its carrier is well beyond the 150-ton limit for radioactive cargo in the canal.

Plan C, so to speak, is to ship the barge around Cape Horn, at the southern tip of South America, and then up the East Coast to South Carolina. But that would require passage through the Straits of Magellan, in the territorial waters of Chile, and Edison's negotiations with Chile have fared poorly, Golden said.

Yet another option is for the barge to circle the globe, Golden said. Details of the possible route are still to be worked out, he said.

An 'incredible metaphor'

Nuclear critic Dan Hirsch, of the Los Angeles-based Committee to Bridge the Gap, said the problem with the reactor vessel is "an incredible metaphor for the fundamental problem of nuclear waste."

The more prevalent problem, he said, is spent fuel ---- a highly radioactive waste ---- that has accumulated for decades at nuclear plants across the United States because the government can't decide what to do with it. The single permanent storage site being studied at Yucca Mountain, Nev., is not expected to open for at least a decade.

"These guys were idiots to have gotten this far without figuring this out," Hirsch said.

A better solution for the reactor vessel's disposal would have been to cut it into segments for transportation, Hirsch said. Edison rejected that idea because cutting it up would have increased workers' radiation exposure. The most radioactive parts of the vessel were sealed inside with concrete.

"There would have been more worker exposure, but at least they would have it in sizes that could be moved," Hirsch said.

Edison did get some rare good news last month when the California Coastal Commission approved the company's plans to tow the retired reactor vessel down the beach at Camp Pendleton. The approval came over the objections of environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, whose representatives said the transportation plan endangers people and wildlife along the way.

Edison officials have said a person seated on the sealed reactor vessel for an hour would be exposed to radiation equal to that of a dental X-ray.

The company had until March 31 to get the 950-ton package of concrete and steel down 15 miles of road and beach to the harbor at Camp Pendleton, a deadline set to avoid the nesting seasons of native birds including the snowy plover and California least term. It's apparently not going to happen.

Bad news

Within weeks of the Coastal Commission approval, Edison realized it would miss the upcoming deadline because of the difficult negotiations to clear the rest of the route, Golden said. Bad weather and heavy rain in February further complicated the plan.

That leaves Edison with the next-best opportunity to tow the reactor vessel down the beach, a five-month window from November through March 31, 2004.

Other hurdles abound. Some are set by nature, such as the onset of winter storms that could prohibit a heavy load on the open sea. Many difficulties are bureaucratic, like the permits required for harbor or rail passages.

Another big deadline stands out. The only dump in the United States that can accept the radioactive reactor vessel, a 235-acre facility owned by the state of South Carolina, is 90 percent full and will close to waste from all western states after 2008. After that, Edison may have nowhere to take its retired reactor vessel.

While the vessel is classified as low-level waste, the government considers it "Class C," which is more radioactive than other classes of low-level waste. Only the Barnwell dump accepts Class C.

Doors are closing around the world to San Onofre's reactor vessel, which held the Unit 1 radioactive core from 1968 until 1992. Edison began has been dismantling the reactor since 1999, and the vessel is the last large radioactive piece.

Harbor off limits

Yet another obstacle has surfaced to the reactor vessel's voyage. Harbor officials in Charleston, S.C., have said they will refuse entry to the radioactive cargo, fearing it could be a terrorist target.

South Carolina officials reportedly are concerned not about radiation danger but that the large, heavy load could sink in the harbor, where it would impede traffic for some time before it could be removed.

"We are still looking for a port," said Edison spokesman Golden.

The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has set no deadline for the reactor's removal, other than the end of the plant's licensed life, and Edison has plenty of time to meet that.

San Onofre has two operating reactors that are licensed through 2022, and Edison could apply for a 20-year extension of the licenses. Also, after that the commission allows the plants up to 60 years to dismantle the sites and remove all radioactive material.

That would allow as many as three retired reactors to remain atop the coastal bluffs until 2102, an option Golden said is unlikely.

Utility officials and federal regulators agree that, except for the reactor vessel's disposal, the dismantling of the reactor has gone smoothly and on schedule since planning began in 1996.

The commission "has no safety concerns" about long-term storage at San Onofre, said commission spokesman Victor Dricks.

"As long as they have a license to operate that plant, they can keep that reactor vessel on site," Dricks said.

Contact staff writer Phil Diehl at (760) 901-4087 or pdiehl@nctimes.com.

3/10/03

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