(pulsing music)
- [Narrator] If you
were an evil mastermind,
and you said "Where
could I put nuclear waste
that would really scare the
bejeezus out of people?"
It's hard to think of
one that's worse than
San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.
(waves crashing)
- [Rachel Becker] This is the San Onofre
Nuclear Generating Station,
just outside of San Clemente, California.
It's been closed since 2013,
but it's operators are
struggling with a problem
that most plants in America share;
all the spent nuclear
fuel it ever generated
is still trapped.
Right here.
(Geiger counter ticking)
So the thing you notice immediately
about this plant is its location.
You've got the Pacific Ocean right there,
you've got the Interstate Five
Freeway just over that hill,
you've got L.A. and San
Diego within 75 miles,
and 8.5 million people living in the area,
and smack-dab in the center of it all
is tons and tons of nuclear waste.
Back when it was running,
the San Onofre plant could power
1.4 million homes at a time.
But, now the reactors are retired,
and the plants operator,
Southern California Edison,
is preparing to dismantle it completely.
So to see this whole multi-billion
dollar process firsthand,
we took a tour of the power plant.
Our guide is Ron Pontes,
manager of Environmental
Decommissioning Strategy,
and except for all of the security,
the seagulls, and us, the
place is pretty empty.
- [Ron Pontes] Behind us
is the containment building
for Unit Three.
Inside that building is the
nuclear steam supply system,
which consists of the
reactor, steam generators,
pressure riser, and reactor coolant pumps.
- [Rachel] That's where
the fuel would normally go,
bundles of hollow metal
rods that are packed
with little pellets of uranium.
Inside the reactor,
uranium atoms split apart
in a chain reaction that produces heat.
- [Ron] That's where the heat is generated
that is transmitted to
the steam generators
to make steam to turn the turbines,
which makes electricity for our customers.
- [Rachel] Only, this plant hasn't
produced electricity for years,
ever since one of the steam generators
sprung a leak.
- [Newscaster] It is a done deal.
SoCal Edison has gotten
tired of waiting to reopen
the troubled San Onofre power plant,
so today, the utility announced it is
shutting it down for good.
- [Rachel] Now, the plant operators
need to decontaminate the site,
demolish the structures,
and generally tear
everything to the ground.
First though, they have to do something
with all that fuel.
Fresh fuel isn't actually
all that radioactive.
It gets more radioactive
after it spends time
in a nuclear reactor,
because that chain reaction
that generates heat,
it also makes other radioactive atoms,
like cesium-137,
strontium-90,
and plutonium-239.
About half of the cesium
and strontium decay
in 30 or so years.
The plutonium? That takes longer.
Like 24,000 years longer.
These days, the spent
fuel starts cooling off
in cement-lined pools of water.
After a few years, it's
moved to dry storage,
air-cooled steel containers
inside massive concrete blocks.
Eventually, they'll move all
the waste into those blocks.
They're lower maintenance,
and they're supposed to withstand floods,
earthquakes, tornadoes,
airplane collisions,
you name it.
- [Ron] It requires no
pumps or active systems
to support it.
As long as we keep this inlet and outlet
free of any debris or blockage,
the system will continue to operate.
- [Rachel] That's good,
because that's where the spent fuel is
gonna have to stay for
the foreseeable future.
- [Ron] What we are faced with
here is a national problem.
Every commercial plant in the States is
faced with the same problem.
There's nothing to do with the fuel,
because the federal
government's not performing.
- [Rachel] San Onofre's first
reactor powered up in 1968,
at the height of nuclear energy's prime,
and the height of the energy industry
selling America on how
safe and powerful it was.
- [Advertiser] The heat
output of one pound of uranium
can equal the heat output
of 70 tons of coal.
- [Rachel] There were
promises that one day,
atomic energy would be too cheap to meter;
that it would power the
world by the year 2000.
But, for all that promise,
there just wasn't a
solid plan for the waste.
- [Rob Nikolewski] One could argue
maybe we should have thought
about this as a nation
before we started building
nuclear power plants,
but by this time,
the horse is already out of the barn.
- [Rachel] That's Rob Nikolewski,
a reporter at the San Diego Union Tribune,
who's been following
the story at San Onofre
for years.
- [Rob] In short, the reason why
the spent nuclear fuel stays at San Onofre
is because the federal
government has dropped the ball.
- [Rachel] For decades, the plan has been
to bury the waste underground.
The government was supposed
to start accepting spent fuel in 1998,
and the site it settled
on was Yucca Mountain,
in Nevada.
Nevada politicians hated that idea.
- [Senator Harry Reid]
Beginning this year,
the story takes a new,
and yes, an ugly turn,
which the press and
others tagged months ago:
the "Screw Nevada Bill".
- [Rachel] So the plan has been stuck
in limbo for decades,
and nuclear power companies
have been suing the government
for missing that deadline.
Meanwhile, nuclear plants keep operating.
They produce about 20%
of America's electricity,
and 2200 tons of waste each year.
- [Ron] This is probably
not the ideal place
to store spent nuclear fuel.
We would all agree on that.
But, while it's here,
we will fulfill our obligation
to manage it safely.
- [Rachel] There are a few
ways out of this situation.
- [Rob] There's been
a movement in Congress
to restart Yucca Mountain.
The Trump Administration
is in favor of that.
There's a bill that's in the House.
Then there's this talk about
consolidated interim storage.
There are two sites
they've talked about there.
- [Rachel] There's even talk about
moving the waste to higher
ground near the plant,
but farther from the sea.
- [Rob] There's all these different
permutations out there that are basically
put everything up in the air.
- [Rachel] But in the meantime,
the waste is going to sit there,
in that concrete fuel morgue on the coast.
Again, it's safe in those blocks.
We stood right next to them,
and then even swept
ourselves for radiation,
just to be sure.
But, for people living near San Onofre,
it's hard to forget about them entirely.
- [Ron] They go on with their lives,
you don't see people freaking out.
But on the other hand, though,
it's something that
hangs over their heads.
- [Rachel] We wanted to see for ourselves,
so we checked out the beach
that the plant sits on.
We passed people fishing,
walking their dogs,
surfing, hanging out,
like you'd do on any other beach
that isn't next to 1700
tons of spent nuclear fuel.
I asked some of them how it feels
to be living in this thing's shadow.
They weren't wild about talking on camera,
but they had a lot to say.
There was a guy walking
his dog on the beach,
and he actually said that nuclear power
is this incredible thing.
But storing the waste at the plant
is a federal mistake.
Another woman was there on
the beach with her family.
She says she surfs here all the time,
but it's still eerie when she
takes a wave back to shore
and she sees those twin reactor domes
staring back at her.
(waves rolling)
So during our tour,
we weren't the only
visitors to the dry storage.
There were a ton of seagulls,
and the plant is doing their
best to keep them away.
They've got plastic coyotes
patrolling the dry storage,
but for as long as it's there,
it's probably gonna be
covered in seagull poop.
