San Onofre, the beach that 2 million people visit and hides a nuclear bomb underground

09/01/2021 15:38

• Clarín.com

• Dresses

Updated 09/02/2021 10:29

San Onofre

Beach

in

California

was a paradise until humanity got in its way.

With more than 2 million visitors per year, it is a point loved by surfers and was even awarded for its waves and beauty in the 60s. It also has historical value, since nearby there is a sacred site of natives with 10,000 years old. .

But beneath the surface hides a gigantic threat. 

This is 3.6 million pounds of nuclear waste from

a group of reactors closed nearly a decade ago

.

Authorities forgot about him, leaving him indefinitely stranded, susceptible to threats like corrosion, earthquakes and rising sea levels.

That waste is the by-product of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (Songs), three nuclear reactors owned primarily by the Southern California Edison (SCE) utility company

.

It is part of the long list of reactors that the United States is trying to retire, but they are currently a time bomb with no short-term solution.

With more than 2 million visitors per year, it is a point loved by surfers and was even awarded for its waves and beauty in the 60s. Photo: Video capture.

"It's a combination of failures, really,"

said Gregory Jaczko, who chaired the United States' Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the top federal official, between 2009 and 2012, for the situation in San Onofre.

The conflicts began when

Southern California Edison began recording several security problems, including radioactive waste leakage and falsified fire watch records

.

Authorities began to closely monitor the case and by January 2012 alarms went off when a new steam generator, which had been installed just a year ago, began to lose a small amount of radioactivity.

The regulatory commission report found that federal inspectors had overlooked the red flags in 2009 and that

the company had replaced its own steam generators without proper approval

.

SCE tried to fix the problem, but

decided in 2013 to shut down the plant for good.

The plant was closed but its waste remains in place.

Photo: Capture TV.

It seemed like a triumph of ecology, the beach would finally return to the place it used to be, but the festivities came to a sudden stop when it was learned that

the nuclear waste they had produced would remain in place.

Under the United States Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982,

the federal government was required to move the waste to a remote, centralized federal facility beginning in 1998. But that never happened as a suitable location was never found to move this fuel pump. nuclear time, so in 2015 the construction of a facility was approved to store them until 2035.

In August 2020, workers completed the multi-year burial process, loading

the last of 73 trash cans into a concrete enclosure

.

Due to lack of foresight, this kind of conflict is now beginning to recur as nuclear reactors are shut down.

The regulatory commission must now manage one crisis after another.

There it is near a pair of faults that, according to experts, could generate an earthquake of magnitude 7.4.

Photo: Capture TV.

"Unfortunately, it was not a big issue at the nuclear regulatory commission," Allison Macfarlane, former chair of the commission, told The Guardian.

"In the nuclear industry in general, the end of the nuclear cycle receives very little attention

. So never becomes 'oh, this is a very important issue, we

should be doing something'

".

However in this case the risks do not stop growing.

A time bomb

The problem is not only the waste, which is buried about 30 meters from the coast, below the I-5 highway, one of the busiest roads in the United States, but also there it is 

close to a pair of faults that, according to experts, could generate an earthquake of magnitude 7.4.

The site could have a serious impact on the environment in the future, including coastal access and marine life.

Photo: Capture TV.

But that's not all: another potential problem is corrosion.

The site could have a serious impact on the environment in the future, including coastal access and marine life

.

"It would be exposed to coastal flooding and erosion hazards beyond its design capacity, requiring protection by replacing or expanding the existing Songs shoreline armor," says a Coastal Commission document.

Aiming at the nuclear regulatory commission

Now eyes are on the NRC,

the body in charge of guarding nuclear companies and requiring them to adhere to the letter of the rules to avoid catastrophes.

According to those closest to the issue, this entity has distributed too many exemptions and special permits. 

“

The problem they have here is that the NRC is simply not doing its job as a regulator.

So what he has done is allow the industry to basically determine the conditions under which this material is temporarily stored throughout the country, "said retired Rear Admiral Len Hering, a specialist in the field, to the British newspaper.

"The problem they have here is that the NRC is just not doing its job as a regulator."

Photo: Capture TV.

Meanwhile, in San Onofre there have been two incidents since the end of 2013 that provoked the ire of activists and residents:

In 2018, workers found loose equipment in one of the boats

, prompting a 10-day work stoppage to ensure that the error will not pose a threat to the public.

Several months later, a container full of radioactive waste

jammed as employees were loading it on the ground and it nearly fell 18 feet.

The second incident was not made public until a whistleblower brought it up at a community event.

In 2018 there were two accidents that alerted environmental organizations.

Photo: Capture TV.

On the other hand, from the other side of the window they try to give peace of mind.

Al Bates, San Onofre's regulatory affairs manager, said there is a likelihood of incidents "caused by man or by nature" in San Onofre.

But if they do, he said, there would be little impact on public safety.

"The fact is that yes, there is high-level nuclear waste. But yes, the technologies that we are using are extremely robust for any possible scenario

,

" he

said.

Songs spokesman John Dobken also emphasized that the waste is stored safely, but said that

 "the right thing to do would be to relocate the waste off-site, a decision that only the government can make."

"The right thing to do would be to relocate the waste off-site, a decision that only the government can make."

Photo: Capture TV.

In all this context, one of the most valuable and visited beaches in the United States

, continues to store a nuclear bomb a few meters deep

from which no short-term solutions seem to appear and 

few think about the consequences that an accident could bring.

That's what

Rod Ewing

, a professor of

nuclear safety at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation

, and the author of a 2021 report on spent nuclear waste that focuses on San Onofre,

pointed at that

.

“The problem with our approach to security analysis is that we spend a lot of time proving that things are secure.

We don't spend a lot of time imagining how systems will fail, "he said." And I think the latter is the most important. "

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