Radioactive Drew Pays a Visit to SONGS

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Putting radiation in perspective.

(Spoiler alert: it's all around you.)

So what do you do if you love creating videos, but also like learning about the radioactive things in the world? Obviously you combine the two and start a YouTube channel.

That's what Andrew Walker did. He and his camera and Geiger counter have visited many locales and found many things that make that Geiger counter go click, click, click.

And not all of those places are "nuclear" sites.

Read more about Andrew's travels and discoveries in the atomic world in our blog post.

Watch Part 1 below with a focus on decommissioning SONGS. And look for Part 2 soon.

Andrew Walker (right) interviews SCE's Jeff Carey, a long-time radiation protection manager at SONGS, in the Unit 3 fuel handling building where one of the spent fuel pools is located.

Inside the Decommissioning of San Onofre Nuclear Power Station

Continuing to 'correct the record' when it comes to SONGS, spent nuclear fuel

There are still some who tilt at windmills when it comes to nuclear energy and spent nuclear fuel.

That's one point of our op-ed posted June 6 in the Voice of OC, Misinformation about Nuclear Doesn't Serve the Public Interest.

It comes in response to an op-ed by local San Clemente activist Roger Johnson. In trying to make nuclear energy into something it just isn't, Johnson goes to great lengths to avoid the facts.

Johnson ends his piece with a common series of falsehoods about nuclear energy, including that it is "unreliable." Let's look at the data:

Just a glance at the Energy Information Administration table of capacity factors for 2021 shows nuclear is the most reliable source of electricity, operating 92.7% of the time, the exact opposite of what Johnson claims.

Obviously, everyone doesn't have to support nuclear energy. But if your stated reasons for not supporting nuclear have no validity, isn't that worth examining?

Vice News on site for focus on decommissioning and spent nuclear fuel

Vice News spent most of Tuesday with us for a piece they're putting together on nuclear energy, including it's future in California.

Correspondent Keegan Hamilton spoke with Regulatory Affairs Manager Al Bates (above) and Nuclear Fuels Engineer Randall Granaas.

The subject matter included what it takes to decommission a nuclear power plant and how the spent nuclear fuel is safely stored on site.

We'll let you know when the segment is posted.

Crushed concrete pile almost gone ... for now

The huge pile of crushed concrete created from the initial dismantlement of structures at SONGS has been virtually eliminated through rail shipments to Clive, Utah.

27 buildings and structures were removed in 2021 and so far this year work has been concentrated inside the containment domes, and the turbine buildings, which are largely structural steel on the outside. Until work progresses to the large reinforced concrete pedestals at the interior of the turbine buildings, there won't be much concrete to crush.

This year, our SONGS Decommissioning Solutions contractors have safely made more than 700 shipments carrying more than 57 million pounds. To date, more than 120 million pounds of material has been shipped off-site out of more than a billion total for this phase of the decommissioning project.

Nuclear News Briefs

US Army expects to deploy portable nuclear reactor

The U.S. Navy has been using small nuclear reactors for decades and now the Army is looking to develop and deploy its own reactors. But these won't be powering vessels, they'll be powering bases.

BWXT will be constructing the prototype at the Idaho National Lab. Here's what Interesting Engineering wrote about the project:

To make the reactor portable, BWXT is designing all the components, including the reactor core and its control system components in ISO-compliant 20 feet (6 m) long shipping containers to make it easy to transport via air and road, rail, or sea. Once on-site, the system will be assembled in as little as 72 hours. The shutdown, cool down and disassembly for transport will occur in less than seven days.

A prototype should be ready in 2024. Read the full article here.

Progress in Canada on long-term spent fuel storage

Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) reports it has successfully completed a full-scale demonstration of the engineered barriers that will safely contain and isolate the country's used nuclear fuel in a deep geological repository.