NRC to Hold Public Meeting on San Onofre Restart

As the anniversary of the San Onofre Nuclear Plant's shutdown for technical failures approaches, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is holding a public meeting to discuss the fate of the controversial plant.

The commission will hold a public meeting Feb. 12 to update the community about a proposal to re-start the plant at partial power.

Meanwhile, anti-nuclear activists have set up their own event in San Clemente with a celebrity environmentalist to mark the radioactive steam leak and shuttering of the controversial plan. Environmentalist and actor Ed Begley Jr. will address a crowd Feb. 2 to mark the anniversary of the steam leak that forced the plant to shut down and revealed that the steam generators were

Anti-nuclear advocates also plan to show up in force on the day of the meeting, which begins at 6 p.m. in Capo Beach Church.

"It's very important for us," said Gary Headrick of San Clemente Green, a local environmental group. "It'll probably be the last public meeting before they make a decision."

Southern California Edison has been working to convince regulators it can safely restart one of its reactors at partial power for a shortened run time, based on exhaustive calculations cross-checked by different outside experts. Anti-nuclear advocates say the plan is tantamount to an experiment with lives and property because there is no way to know how the generators will react.

The meeting will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Capo Beach Church, 25975
Domingo Ave. in Capistrano Beach. The facility has seating for 1,100 people and parking is free.

“We want to provide the public with a status report on the NRC’s inspection activities at San Onofre and our ongoing evaluation of Southern California Edison’s proposal for restarting Unit 2,” said NRC Region IV Administrator Elmo E. Collins in a press release. “We encourage interested members of the public to attend the meeting, ask questions and provide comments to the NRC staff about our ongoing review.”

The meeting will be webcast live at http://video.nrc.gov. The video stream will begin at about 5 p.m. PDT, but the audio stream will not start until the meeting begins, the release states. A phone bridge is also available by calling: 1-888-790-2038 and entering pass code 47018.

The webcast and phone bridge will be one-way only. Questions or comments can be submitted to the NRC staff after the meeting at: OPA4@nrc.gov.