San Onofre Nuclear Waste Problems
Tom English, Ph.D., Samuel Lawrence Foundation
Subrata Chakraborty, Ph.D., UCSD, Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Rear Admiral Len Hering Sr. USN (ret)
January 19, 2019
INTRODUCTION
In August 2018, a near-accident during the loading of nuclear waste into dry storage triggered a federal investigation and brought new urgency to the debate of how best to store some of the most dangerous waste known to humankind – spent nuclear fuel. The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (S.O.N.G.S.) closed in 2012 after a number of serious failures. Since then, Southern California Edison and its contractor, Holtec International, built a concrete storage vault to hold 3.6 million pounds of nuclear waste in dry storage. That vault is footsteps from the rising Pacific Ocean. In our brief report, we explore the fatal flaws of this location and recommend moving the storage facility to a technically defensible storage facility at a significantly higher elevation with distance from the ocean. We address the inadequacy of the equipment used to move and contain
RATIONALE
Most serious of the issues facing the interim storage of nuclear waste at S.O.N.G.S. include the gouging damage to fully-loaded steel canisters upon downloading into the storage vault. These 54-ton thin-walled steel canisters are loaded with nuclear waste in wet storage – spent fuel pools – and are transported to the on-site concrete storage vault, adjacent to the reactor domes. With the Brinell hardness scale
1. POOR LOCATION
Today, two separate Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations (ISFSIs) exist at San Onofre. The newest, built by Holtec, is located about 100 feet from the Pacific Ocean on the 85-acre grounds of S.O.N.G.S. The property is part of Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton and is
Forces of nature, exacerbated by sea-level rise, carry further risks. Frequent high humidity and coastal fog make the metal at the site susceptible to short-term corrosion and stress-induced corrosion cracking. Also located at this site is a second, older ISFSI, which contains 51 thin-walled steel canisters that are up to 15 years old.
Numerous reports show that
Dr. James Hansen, who managed NASA’s climate change program for about 25 years, predicts sea levels could rise up to 10 feet during the next 50 years. At San Onofre, this would cause the bottom seven feet of the Holtec nuclear storage canisters to be submerged in seawater, unintentionally resulting in wet storage. This would invite a crisis similar to that of Fukushima, where spent fuel was exposed to moisture.
A second estimate appears in a comprehensive report by the Working Group of the California Ocean Protection Council Science Advisory Team. Published in 2017, the report shows 75% likelihood sea levels will rise by two feet by 2100. Either of these scenarios envisions that a major portion of the nuclear storage canisters as San Onofre would be submerged in seawater. The combination of the effects of sea-level rise and
All of this can be avoided. If the nuclear waste at the two ISFSIs is transferred into thick-walled casks and then moved to a technically defensible storage facility at higher ground, the problems of ocean water and
2. POOR TECHNOLOGY
In California, the storage tanks at gas stations must be double-walled; painful experience has shown that single-walled containers can leak gasoline into the groundwater system. With a double-walled fuel tank, if a leak occurs it can be detected and the storage container can be repaired or replaced before any gasoline is released. At San Onofre, we certainly should expect that some kind of leak prevention system would be in place to contain extremely toxic high-level radioactive waste. Additionally, the canisters should be able to be monitored and inspected. The thin-walled canisters at the San Onofre ISFSIs cannot be adequately monitored or inspected. Regulators and Holtec officials have stated that the canisters cannot be inspected from the inside or the outside for cracks or other degradation and that, even if
To illustrate the importance of adequate monitoring, we analyze a scenario in which one vent of a canister clogs. We refer to a Holtec non-proprietary safety analysis report1 that calculates a temperature rise to about 90% of the maximum permissible limit (MPL) in 24 hours. This infers that within the next 12 hours the system will exceed the MPL rating and lead to a meltdown2.
Through our own statistical analysis,3 we prove that if the probability of clogging one of the vents during an event is 1%, then the chance that one of the 146 total vents (two vents on each of 73 canisters) will clog in such an event is 78%
2.1 NEAR MISS EVENT
David Fritch, an industrial safety inspector turned whistleblower, remembers August 3, 2018, as a bad day. Fritch worked at San Onofre during a loading failure that left a fully-loaded 54-ton canister of high-level radioactive waste stuck on the lip of a guide ring. Above the 17-foot-tall canister, the slings that attached it to the behemoth loading rig had gone slack.
The canister was, “hanging by about a
Subsequent investigations revealed that the operators and managers could not see Canister No. 29 as it was being loaded into the storage cavity and became stuck for nearly an hour.
Since the near-accident, regulators have halted further loading of canisters into the seaside storage vault and researchers have explored what could have happened if Canister No. 29 had fallen.
Our own research explores the basic physics of a fully-loaded 54-ton canister in free fall to extrapolate the upper energy involved in the initial impact.
For example, the falling canister could hit the steel-lined concrete floor of the nuclear waste storage facility with explosive energy greater than that of several large sticks of dynamite. The resultant damage to the canister could cause a large radiation release.
At point of contact at the bottom of the storage cavity, damage to the concrete and metal structure could ruin the cooling system. The damage to the concrete would equal that of a fully-loaded 18-wheeler truck, with a gross weight of 80,000 pounds, crashing into reinforced concrete at 23 miles per hour. Our preliminary calculations show the combination of the weight and velocity of the dropped canister exceeds the ISFSIs’ “design criteria for tornado missiles,” by a factor of 4. Future experiments should include drop tests of the actual canisters with non-radioactive loads that simulate the weight of the spent fuel assemblies and fuel baskets to determine what would happen to the actual canisters
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) computer simulations show what happens when a nuclear storage canister with slightly thinner walls4 drops from 19 feet. In the test, a
Our research suggests the entire storage system may need to be redesigned to reduce the probability of canister failure to levels that are acceptable in such a highly-populated area.
RESULTS 2.2 GOUGES IN DROPPED CANISTER
In their 2007 report, the NRC’s
We established preliminary results of such an analysis using the Brinell hardness scale approach to estimate the depth and width of expected gouges in 316 stainless steel, of which the Holtec canisters at San Onofre is made.
While the canister is stuck, the guide ring gouges the bottom of the canister.
As the canister drops it is gouged on two sides by a combination of the guide ring, the storage cavity wall and the inner diameter of the transfer cask. This gouging absorbs some of the kinetic energy of the canister.
When the canister smashes into the bottom of the cavity, the kinetic energy and momentum from the fall will be dissipated by damage to:
• the ISFSI;
• the canister; and
• the contents of the canister.
The formation process of gouges will exert a force on the canister. This is the force, P, shown in Figure 2.
In Figure 3, the width of a gouge is shown in relationship to the canister’s weight. The expected range of gouge widths is shown in Figure 3. A variety of indenter widths are used as a surrogate for the gouging. The gouging widths range from 2 mm to 16 mm. This is highly significant, since the thickness of the nuclear canisters is 5/8”, which is close to 16 mm. We recommend that tests be performed on actual canisters to experimentally determine the accuracy of these predictions.
The expected range of gouge depths is shown in Figure 4. A variety of indenter depths are used as a surrogate for the gouging. The gouging depths expected to be found range from 1 mm to 4.5 mm. This is highly significant since 4.5 mm is 28% of the thickness of the nuclear storage canister.
2.3 GOUGES DURING ROUTINE LOADING
Extensive gouging will also occur during routine loading of the nuclear storage canister into the storage cavity. By moving the Vertical Cask Transporter, shown in Figure 5, crude adjustments can be made to the alignment of the canister as it is lowered into the storage cavity. The bulky, tank-like machine travels on steel treads, like those found on earth-moving or military equipment. The transporter is not equipped to make the fine adjustments required to insert the nuclear storage canister into the narrow spacing of the storage cavity without banging the canister against the guide ring. This banging gouges the canister and causes the canister
We strongly recommend that a sampling of the canisters previously lowered into the
3. POOR MANAGEMENT
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Rear Admiral Len Hering, USN (ret) served as a Nuclear Weapons Safety Officer, Handling Officer
When it comes to the handling and movement of nuclear material, you would expect that only those specifically qualified and trained for such an important task would be deployed to ensure the safe movement of that material. In the Department of Defense (DOD), strict requirements are in place to make sure this very dangerous material is properly handled, transported and stowed.
The DOD and Navy programs were created and built to make certain nuclear material was secure, safely handled and accounted for. Every person who has any contact with nuclear material is required to have a security clearance. A “two-person rule” is in effect at all times. Personnel at all levels perform countless hours of training, obtain certifications of qualification, and complete rigorous inspection and training events to both prove and assure their proficiency in performing the job they are assigned. All of this is all done before anyone is permitted to even gaze upon a real weapon.
Handling gear and all aspects of the evolution are vigilantly maintained, inspected, weight-tested and inspected again. Cranes and dollies or hoist equipment are tested, placed under extreme loading conditions and prepared for specific tasks. Nothing goes untested. Nothing
Ashore, and specifically at S.O.N.G.S, I find that virtually none of the protocols that should be expected for the safe handling of this dangerous material are present. I find that personnel and companies are being hired virtually off the street, no specific qualification standards are present or for that matter even required, training is not specific to the risks of the material involved, and there is no fully-qualified and certified team assembled for this highly-critical operation. They have not been required to conduct dry runs to ensure handling teams are proficient and, more importantly, they have never trained specifically to be ready to execute emergency procedures should the unexpected occur. The manuals are not
The widely reported incident in which a 54-ton, thin-walled container nearly fell 18 feet while it was being lowered into its silo rocked me to the core. What made things worse was narrative in a follow-up report that stated the canister was left suspended for nearly an hour, held up by a mere guide ring installed in the silo, cables slack and operators clueless. There is no doubt that this incident occurred because those on-scene were completely unqualified, unprepared, untrained and incompetent. This very dangerous operation was being performed as if this crew
The handling of nuclear waste at San Onofre and other sites across our country should scare every single American. We have a regulatory agency that has failed to make sure the most basic safety precautions are being applied to one of the most dangerous industrial evolutions of our time. The number of waivers being issued where safety is of concern is staggering.
In the DOD, the reason why there were and continue to be no significant accidents with the handling of nuclear material is
CONCLUSION
The nuclear waste at San Onofre requires a much better storage configuration and must be moved to a technically defensible storage facility to reduce threats. From a security standpoint, the waste should be moved further away from major transportation corridors. The thin-walled nuclear waste storage canisters are at risk of failure due to gouging when downloaded into the seaside storage vault. Once lowered into the storage system, the canisters cannot be thoroughly inspected, monitored or repaired. A near-accident on August 3rd demonstrated that safety protocols are
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank UCSD Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry and The Samuel Lawrence Foundation. For more information visit www.samuellawrencefoundation.org/nuclear-energy.
CITATIONS
1Table 4.I.9, page 1050, Holtec International Final Safety Analysis Report for the
2S. Alyokhina, Thermal analysis of certain accident conditions of dry spent nuclear fuel storage, Nuclear Engineering and Technology 50 (2018) 717-723.
3Chakraborty and English, 2019, ES&H Risk Estimation from “Interim Storage” of SNF at the Beach: The San Onofre NPP, WM2019 Conference, March 3-7, 2019, Phoenix, Arizona, USA (under review).
4Pg. 4-24 Table 12, NUREG-1864 – A Pilot Probabilistic Risk Assessment of a Dry Cask Storage System at a Nuclear Power Plant, March 2007, A. Malliakos, NRC Project Manager