Large Nuclear Plant Component to Be Shipped to Utah Disposal Facility

ROSEMEAD, Calif., Dec. 16, 2013 — The San Onofre nuclear plant Unit 2 reactor vessel head removed almost two years ago will be shipped beginning tonight via truck to a disposal facility in Clive, Utah.

This video shows the vessel head loaded onto a tractor-trailer. The shipment, which will be escorted by state police, is scheduled to leave San Onofre Monday night and is expected to arrive Thursday at the low-level radioactive waste facility in Utah. San Onofre safely completed similar shipments of retired steam generators to the same facility in the past three years.

The vessel head, which weighs about 77 tons, has been packaged to meet all U.S. Department of Transportation and Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations. As a result, the potential exposure to an individual from the vessel head is very low — standing roughly six feet away for an hour would be the equivalent exposure from a dental X-ray.

There will be no measurable radiation exposure for local communities as the transport moves safely through California and Nevada on its way to Utah. This shipment is Class A low-level radioactive waste, the lowest class level. Federal transportation regulations limit the dose rate of transported materials to less than 10 millirems per hour at a distance of two meters (about six feet) from the vehicle. The dose rate for this shipment at two meters is less than 1 millirem per hour. Examples of radiation exposure include:

  • Watching TV for a year will expose you to 1 millirem of radiation.
  • Flying round-trip cross-country exposes you to 3–5 millirems of radiation.
  • Living in a structure made of adobe/stone/brick for a year exposes you to roughly 7 millirems of radiation.

SCE announced June 7 that it would retire San Onofre Units 2 and 3, and begin preparations to decommission the facility. The site workforce has been reduced to 520, a reduction of more than 900 employees. For more information about SCE, visit www.songscommunity.com.

About Southern California Edison
An Edison International (NYSE:EIX) company, Southern California Edison is one of the nation’s largest electric utilities, serving a population of nearly 14 million via 4.9 million customer accounts in a 50,000-square-mile service area within Central, Coastal and Southern California.

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Large Nuclear Plant Component to Be Shipped to Utah Disposal Facility