Sept. 30, 2025, may mark the day communities in Southern California first took initiative to protect themselves from deadly nuclear waste stranded indefinitely at the decommissioned San Onofre nuclear plant.
With Irvine Mayor Larry Agran spearheading the effort, a special study session of the Irvine City Council convened to address the risks of 3.6 million pounds of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel stored in temporary canisters, out in the open, in an earthquake zone, and just 108 feet from the shoreline. The safety threats include terrorism, sea level rise, earthquakes, tsunamis, and cannister corrosion from exposure to moist, salty air.
Because many of the fission products of nuclear reactors, like Cesium-137, are highly radioactive and extremely long-lived, spent fuel requires isolation for hundreds of thousands of years. Each of San Onofre’s 123 canisters contains about one-third the Cesium-137 as was released during the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster…