ML19263A659
| ML19263A659 | |
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|---|---|
| Site: | San Onofre  |
| Issue date: | 08/29/2019 |
| From: | Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards |
| To: | |
| Doell M | |
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| Download: ML19263A659 (121) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
Public Hearing on Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act (NEIMA) Section 108 Docket Number: (n/a)
Location: San Juan Capistrano, California Date: Thursday, August 29, 2019 Work Order No.: NRC-0518 Pages 1-118 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
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PUBLIC HEARING ON NUCLEAR ENERGY INNOVATION AND MODERNIZATION ACT (NEIMA) SECTION 108
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THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 2019
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SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, CALIFORNIA
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The Public Meeting was held at the City of San Juan Capistrano Community Center, 25925 Camino Del Avion, at 6:00 p.m., Brett Klukan and Donna Janda, Facilitators, presiding.
NRC STAFF PRESENT:
BRUCE WATSON, Branch Chief, Reactor Decommissioning Branch TED SMITH, Project Manager, Reactor Decommissioning Branch MARLAYNA DOELL, Project Manager, Reactor Decommissioning Branch BO PHAM, Deputy Director, Division of Decommissioning, Uranium Recovery, and Waste Programs NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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2 SHELDON CLARK, Office of General Counsel ANGEL MORENO, Congressional Affairs Officer VICTOR DRICKS, Office of Public Affairs BRETT KLUKAN, Region I Office DONNA JANDA, Region I Office MIKE ENGLAND, Facilities Security NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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3 P R O C E E D I N G S 6:07 p.m.
MR. WATSON: Good evening, and thank you for coming tonight. Really appreciate you coming out to attend our meeting. We're here for an NRC public meeting. We're here to discuss NEIMA Section 108.
NEIMA stands for the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act.
My group has been tasked with providing a report to Congress, which is required by Section 108 of that act. That requires us to provide that report on the best practices for community advisory boards at decommissioned nuclear power plants. This is an NRC public meeting, Category 3 public meeting.
We're here to obtain your comments to identify best practices for the establishment and operation of local community advisory boards, CABs, but also called by a number of different other names, but they all serve a general purpose for nuclear power plant -- decommissioning at nuclear power plant reactors.
Of course, that would include getting lessons learned from existing CABs, such as the CEP here at San Onofre. With that, I will introduce -- obviously, for safety, we have the exits NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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4 going outside. We have the exits over here, should the fire alarm or other type of emergency be created.
With me tonight, up here at the desk, is Ted Smith and Marlayna Doell. They are both project managers in my branch, both responsible for decommissioning of reactors.
The other members of the NRC staff are Bo Pham, he's a deputy director in our division, decommissioning uranium recovery and waste programs.
We also have Sheldon Clark, who is with our office of general counsel. Angel Moreno's in the back. He's with our office of congressional affairs.
Also back there is Victor Dricks. He's with our office of public affairs. Facilitating tonight are Brett Klukan and Donna Janda from our Region 1 office. They will be facilitating the meeting tonight after our short presentation. Also from the NRC is Mike England from our security, and we also have members of the Ocean County Sheriff's Department. They're here, also.
One of the things I want to mention is that Jacqui, at the end of this table, is our court transcriber. When you speak, we ask you to pronounce your name clearly, and if we need to have a spelling, she'll raise her hand to do that. Tonight's meeting NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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5 is being transcribed. It will be available on the NRC public website once we get it back from Jacqui and her contract company. Again, speak clearly and state your name. The NRC has a lot of decommissioning experience.
Over the last 20 years, we've overseen and inspected the decommissioning at almost 80 complex nuclear facilities. That includes ten nuclear power plants that have completed decommissioning. Seven of those still have nuclear fuel on them and have a dry fuel storage facility.
One thing I want to mention to you is all of these facilities have been released for unrestricted use, so they can be used by whatever the licensee or the owner of the property chooses to do once we terminate that part of the license. Part of our experience in California is the decommissioning of the Rancho Seco facility near Sacramento.
We terminated the license on this facility in 2009. It still has a dry fuel storage facility on site. Also in California, our decommissioning experience includes the Humboldt Bay facility, Pacific Gas & Electric is in the final phases of the decommissioning. They're actually planting grass there this week, native grasses, and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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6 we are up there with our inspection team and our independent contractor performing confirmatory surveys to verify that they met the cleanup requirements, the radiological cleanup requirements, so the site can have its license terminated.
Once they submit all the paperwork, the reports that they've generated from the decommissioning, then we will look at approving the license termination. As I mentioned, we're here because of the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act, specifically Section 108. In January 14th of this year, the legislation was issued.
It basically says the Commission shall submit to Congress a report identifying best practices with respect to the establishment and operation of a local community advisory board to foster communication and information exchange between a licensee planning for and involved in decommissioning activities and members of the community that the decommissioning activities may affect, including lessons learned from such boards in existence.
We are expecting comments to be provided to the NRC through November 15th. You can do that through our section website, NEIMA Section 108 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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7 website, regulations.gov, and, of course, by letter or by email. What are community advisory boards?
It's an organized group of citizens interested in safe decommissioning practices and spent fuel management at a decommissioning facility. The sponsor is usually the local licensee or mandated by a state legislature.
We also have one that is now a volunteer organization that was formed recently in New York.
Composition typically includes local community leaders, elected officials, state representatives, and members of the licensee staff. Most CABs have a governing charter to establish roles and responsibilities.
The typical CAB responsibilities are review of the licensee's plans for decommissioning, provides insight into potential impact on the local community, looks for opportunities for public education on decommissioning. They can make recommendations to state officials, and they also can provide input on site restoration, plans for future use of the site, and economic development.
Our report to Congress, the contents of that report will include a description of the CAB discussion topics, CAB recommendations to inform the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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8 decision making processes during decommissioning, CAB interactions with the commission and other regulatory bodies to support the board members' overall understanding of the decommissioning process and promote dialogue between the affected stakeholders and the licensees involved in the decommissioning activities.
We'd also include a description of how a CAB would offer opportunities for public engagement throughout all phases of the decommissioning process.
Our report is supposed to include the best practices, which we would consider the CAB membership composition, selection process and terms of the membership, when the CAB was established, and the frequency of the CAB meetings, also the specific logistics required to support the CAB and other identified best practices or activities.
These topics are captured in a questionnaire that is available at the meeting, out at the front desk there, or they can be electronically submitted. Methods to provide us comments.
Obviously, we're receiving comments tonight through this public meeting. This is our fourth meeting. We are conducting seven more across the country. The law requires us to get a geographic diverse set of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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9 comments back from the various groups. You can fill out the NEIMA questionnaire online. Here's the web address for it. You may submit the comments electronically to the federal rulemaking website.
It's listed here, regulations.gov. Of course, that's the docket number you would find that under. You can scan completed questionnaires and send them to this email address, neima108.resource@nrc.gov, or you can mail them to a member of my staff, Kim Conway, at our offices near Washington, D.C.
In order to look at more information on our website, we've put this on our public website, opening page, under the spotlight, which is in the left side of this slide. Under that, you can click on community advisory board meetings. You'll be able to find the information on our website very easily that way.
Any questions about this meeting or other meetings, you can refer to David McIntyre from our office of public affairs. Here's his phone number.
Of course, you can send email to our email address.
With that, we'll go to the next slide.
I want to remind everybody that our meeting purpose tonight is to obtain public comments and feedback on the best practices for community NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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10 advisory boards at decommissioning power reactors. I know many of you are passionate and have significant interest in a variety of other technical topics, but we're to hear from you about your CEP and any other citizens advisory panel information you can provide to us. Like I said, we are required to provide this report next summer, so we need your input so we can provide that information.
Before we get to the actual meeting, are there any congressional staffers? No? Okay, no one, not here. Are there any elected officials, state or county or local, that would like to make a statement?
Okay, are there any Native American tribe representatives that would like to make a statement?
Okay, with that, I'll just remind you that Jacqui is here transcribing the meeting, and I'll turn it over to Brett Klukan and Donna Janda, who are our facilitators for tonight. Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Before we begin with the public comments portion, we are going to have the members of the community speak. We're giving them an opportunity to speak now. I'd like to invite David Victor to the podium to give some prepared remarks.
MR. VICTOR: Great, thank you very much.
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11 It's a pleasure to be here. I was asked to come and speak not on behalf of the CEP, but to reflect on the CEP's experience and to submit some written testimony. Prior to coming up here, we've sent, to the entire CEP, and also to your panel, we have sent a copy of my testimony tonight, a written copy of my testimony tonight, which we have posted, as well, on songscommunity.com. Then we've also filled out your questionnaire.
We've answered all the questions as a joint product of the CEP leadership and Southern California Edison, the licensee. My name is David Victor. I'm chairman of the CEP. I'm not going to read my entire prepared testimony.
Instead, what I want to do is just draw out a handful of key remarks really reflecting on the CEP, which I chair, and our experience over the last five years or so. I wanted to emphasize the CEP is a two-way engagement panel, is not a decision making body. For example, I'm not representing the decision of the CEP tonight as to what we think works and doesn't work because we don't make any decisions.
We only do engagement. I think that's actually been a strength in the CEP, and I'll talk more about that in a little bit. We met for the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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12 first time in March 2014. We've met quarterly ever since. Every meeting includes an update from the licensee about the decommissioning process, the timeline, a variety of other things. Then usually, there's an in-depth topic at every meeting, often with a technical expert. The topic might be long-term monitoring of the spent-fuel canisters.
The topic might be seismic risks in Southern California, a variety of other topics.
In the appendix to my testimony, I list every topic that we've covered since 2014. The CEP was set up by Edison shortly after they decided to decommission the plant. At the time, there were no best practices for what you should do, so they went and looked to some other experiences, including Maine Yankee.
They looked to some guidance from EPRI, Electric Power Research Institute, about what best practices were emerging, in a kind of tacit way, inside the industry. Those are the best practices reflected in our chart. Our charter is on songscommunity.com, and it's also in the appendix to my testimony.
I have not done a deep survey of all the CEPs and CABs and the whole alphabet soup of panels NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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13 all around the country. I'm delighted you're doing it. I think it'll be very beneficial to future plans to go into decommissioning to have the benefit of your insights. We certainly would have learned from that back in the creation of our CEP. One thing that will become, I think, very clear, is that one size does not fit all.
There are so many different communities, so many different geographies, so many different issues that I don't see -- from the engagement panels that I've met with and talked with in some detail, from our own experiences here, looking at other plants in California, I think it's going to be incredibly important for licensees and the local communities to have the flexibility to do what works and deliver results for them.
Before I talk about best practices that have emerged from our experiences and some areas where we need to do better, frankly, I wanted to say that I think there are two things that are critical to understanding our experience here in the communities around San Onofre.
The first one is that people are extremely engaged. There is barely a topic that arises at the plant or in conjunction with the plant NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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14 or the behavior and operations of the plant on which there isn't a huge range of views. I've visited other plants where nobody's paying attention. Five people show up -- that's an exaggeration, but five people would show up once a year for a community meeting. That's just not the experience here. The communities are very intensely engaged. I think that's a terrific thing for the plant.
It also creates a whole set of challenges when it comes to figuring out what the community really wants and what the sense of the community is.
The second thing that I think is critical to understanding about the San Onofre community engagement experience is the licensee is very heavily engaged.
There are other plants around the country where the licensee is the dominant employer in the entire county, if not a larger geographical error, and there's not a lot else going on. That's not the case here. There's a lot of other industrial activity, a lot of other social activity. The licensee is very heavily engaged in the local communities.
I think that's incredibly important for understanding the motivation of the licensee to set NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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15 up this panel and their commitment to this process.
I'll talk a little bit more about that. I think this is also important to keep in mind as the nuclear industry, the decommissioning industry, moves into a new business model, where some plants are actually sold, completely, to new operators for the D&D process. I don't see how anything like that could ever conceivably happen here, around the San Onofre plant. This licensee has been the operator.
It's this licensee that has a relationship with the community and the responsibilities. It's crucial that they be centrally engaged with this. What are the best practices that have emerged from our experience? I consulted with Jerry Kern, Dan Stetson, and a lot of other people.
I want to just highlight, from our experiences, what I think we -- and I'm just speaking now for myself -- five things that seem to be very important. First, independence, and the second is the diversity in membership of the CEP. Most of the members of the CEP, all of them are volunteers. Most of them are elected officials.
I've learned a tremendous amount from that process because elected officials, on a daily NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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16 basis, are engaged in listening to different voices from the community, making trade-offs, engaging in the same kinds of things that need to happen for serious engagement with the community. There are lots of other voices represented on the panel, as well, organized labor, public interest groups, first responders, Native American communities. It's a very, very diverse group, but it's a group of people who are independent. They're not employees of Edison. We get a slice or two of pizza. Frankly, we could up our game on the dinners.
We get a slice or two of pizza and a cup of coffee. Some members actually, elected officials, have to pay for that. I'm not sure that's entirely appropriate. That's the full compensation that comes from Edison for this experience. We are able to invite our own experts.
We don't have a budget that we control to pay for that. That has essentially not been a problem at all. A lot of people are willing to spend a huge amount of time and volunteer their expertise. We're able to invite our own experts, and that's crucially important.
The CEP always includes one or two people who have technical expertise in the field and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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17 experience in the field. Then, in addition, almost every meeting, we invite somebody from the outside.
We consult along the way with lots of other experts.
That, to me, has been vitally important. It helps keep our meetings and our activities tethered to technical reality, which I think is a danger, sometimes, when community relations are not going well and people imagine all kinds of different scenarios. It's very hard to inject technical expertise. We have done that from the beginning. I think it's a vitally important part of the CEP process.
The third of the five best practices is that the CEP is created and maintained by the licensee. I'm sure there are people -- and I heard testimony from your meeting a couple days ago, and I've seen experiences in other parts, for example, in Vermont -- other parts of the country, for example, Vermont, where the other bodies set up engagement panels.
I can understand why the politics might require that and so on. To me, it's been crucially important that this thing is the creation of the licensee, that they have allowed, in fact demanded that the CEP continue to maintain its independence.
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18 One of the many reasons why having them as the creator and the steward of the CEP, originally, is that without their central involvement, we would not know the level of detail that we know about what's going at the plant. It is impossible to have a serious deliberation about real risks, real opportunities, strategies, without on-the-ground, detailed, regular information about what's actually happening inside the plant, not only things that the licensee is engaged with, but also their vendors.
Frankly, the vendor community is very under-experienced when it comes to community engagement, for the most part. Having the licensee as the point of interface has made it much easier for us to get real information from vendors and to talk with them and to bring them in front of the public, even when, as everyone here knows, they don't always want to do that.
I think that's been a crucial part of this overall process. It is not an oversight panel.
The river of oversight runs deep, maybe especially deep in California. We are not an oversight body.
We are a body set up for a two-way flow of information between the licensee and the local communities.
Fourth of five is that we're not a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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19 decision making body. I mentioned that at the top of my remarks. I think that remains very important.
If we were a formal decision making body, then a huge amount of our meetings and our activities would be focused around counting votes, wordsmithing resolutions, yada yada yada. There's a place for that in governance, but I think a true engagement process, that is not necessary and, in fact, would be a major impediment to an open discussion of ideas at our meetings. Fifth is that our work is completely transparent. Nobody on the CEP has an NDA in place related to their work for the CEP.
All of our correspondence in the CEP is published in batches online. All advanced documents for every meeting are published online. All meetings are live streamed or whatever the technical term is for pushing it all out there and then recorded.
All of that is online, along with transcripts, along with questions that come up in meetings and answers to those questions and so on.
We can do better. I'll talk about that in just a moment. It is a completely transparent process. I might add that it's transparent not only in spirit and organization, but also in its technical work.
I have found it almost impossible -- and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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20 this comes from somebody who is trained not in these fields, but I'm a scientist by profession. I have found it almost impossible to understand a lot of the technical material that is relevant to this process.
I, frankly, also found it very hard to understand a lot of stuff that comes from the NRC. I understand why that is the case, and I understand administrative law. I used to teach a branch of administrative law at Stanford Law School. But I think the community is mystified, often, when they see these documents and they see these materials and assessments.
We see this on a regular basis in the whole drama around chloride-induced stress corrosion cracking. So a big part of what we've done in the CEP has been to translate technical material into English and to help people understand what is actually going on here. I look forward to more CEPs doing that, so we can gain -- so all of us, collectively, can gain from that process.
I will say that if the licensee had not been centrally involved with this, that would have been impossible. It would have been simply impossible to have the resources and knowledge and connections inside the industry to make that happen.
Those are -- that's my list of five best practices.
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21 I want to quickly talk about three things that I think we can do better. I'm sure you will hear, tonight, from others, who have a longer list than three, a different list. One, I think we need to continue figuring out how to engage a more diverse group of voices. There's no way, with a panel of 18 members, most of whom are representing different communities, are elected officials in different communities that are geographically proximate to the plant, there's no way to have all different voices in the community represented.
We can do better with that, and I think, in particular, around the activist community. I think one of the big challenges we have in that, frankly, is that it's often the debates -- the most heated debates that we see in our meetings are debates around things that are not fully supported in the technical literature.
We've had some, for example, knock-down drag-outs in the community and in the press about the real level of seismic risk around the plant. The field of seismic analysis is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but there is technical work in this area, a huge amount of technical work.
Our panel has spent a tremendous amount NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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22 of time working with people who have dissenting views to show them all the evidence, to introduce them to the scientists. It's very hard to run a process when, at the end of the day, some people simply just do not believe the underlying science. That's a challenge. We have not solved that challenge. I believe that might be one of the existential challenges of democracy, so I don't think we're going to fix that problem here, but we need to do better.
The second thing we can do better on is communicating with the public, simple things like our website. Our website was atrocious.
It's much better now. We need to continue to do a better job of communicating information to the public, especially in these areas where these, frankly, falsehoods about the technical analysis spread out inside the communities, are propagated by the press and other mechanisms, and there's technical information there.
We should be doing a better job of helping point people to it in plain English. That's a strategy that has to happen on multiple fronts. We need to do better there. The third thing I'll say that we need to do better on is bandwidth. We're 18 volunteers. People have day jobs.
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23 We are, therefore, dependent upon the licensee to provide staff support, all the other things that are critical to making meetings. A huge amount of work goes into this activity. I'm astonished. Every day, I am so pleased by watching our democracy in action, by watching the amount of time that volunteers are willing to spend for these activities. It's incredible. But people still have limited bandwidth. When the licensee is really busy with something, as has happened over the last 13 months, then other things that are important for this panel don't happen as quickly.
We've been working in a workshop on some things that could go wrong at the plant and what are extreme events, if you like, and what would be responses to those extreme events? That's something the first responder community spent a lot of time on.
That workshop, as just a small illustration, keeps getting pushed down the road because we just -- nobody has the bandwidth to really make that happen. I don't know if that problem's fixable, but that's something that we need to do a better job on. I want to just close by saying I think it's crucial that we think about, and you think about, standards for success.
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24 There are a lot of ways of measuring success. I think success, for us, has at least two dimensions to it. One of them is trust. Trust is not the same thing as agreement, but trust is about process, about transparency, about listening to voices, about providing information, about being responsive. Trust, for the community engagement panel, is not the same thing as trust in the licensee, but the two travel together. When that goes down, then everybody suffers, including the licensee. I think we're in the process, right now, of rebuilding trust by the licensee and by a lot of other folks inside the community.
The second dimension of success is whether the whole process delivers tangible value, tangible results back to the community. There are a lot of places, whether it's the peening system and the schemes for long-term aging management at the ISFSI, whether it is the relationship of first responders, a variety of other areas -- there's a very interesting monitoring program, real-time monitoring program that is taking shape right now -- that are not fully, by any stretch of the imagination, but are partly the result of the work with the CEP.
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25 These are tangible results. I think this is why one size fits all won't work for every community because every community is going to have their own ideas about where and how they get value.
I think we have to remember that delivering value back to the community is a constant process. The area where I want to make sure we deliver value back to the community is what on ultimately matters, which is moving the spent fuel off the ISFSI in a responsible and safe way, as promptly as possible.
That problem, sadly, is something we can't fix ourselves, locally. It requires changes in federal law. It's a very familiar discussion and debate.
I hope that more community advisory boards and engagement panels and other mechanisms will help these communities get themselves better organized politically, so that we are more effective in Washington, which is ultimately where the change is needed if we're going to start moving spent fuel notably off these decommissioned sites. Let me stop there, and thank you very much for your interest and your attention.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. Next, as was noted, the licensee in terms of the CEP does play a role -- a specific role in sponsorship.
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26 Because of that, before I turn to the other members of the CEP who might have to speak tonight, I'd like to invite Doug Bauder to the microphone to give some short remarks.
MR. BAUDER: Thank you for the opportunity to make a few comments. I'd like to thank the NRC for holding this forum. I'm Doug Bauder, the vice president of decommissioning at San Onofre and the chief nuclear officer. Throughout our decommissioning effort at SONGS, we've emphasized three key principles that are safety, environmental stewardship, and finally engagement. First, safety.
We've taken great efforts to ensure that the decisions we make around decommissioning the plant are, first and foremost, safe.
Around environmental stewardship, it's our desire to promptly dismantle and decontaminate the plant. We hope to start that process soon. We intend to be good stewards of the environment and turn this site over to the owner, the United States Navy, in a condition as good as or better than they gave it to us years ago.
That includes radiological decontamination to below NRC limits. Finally, engagement. This is obviously the area of focus here NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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27 tonight. How do you best engage with the community?
We've had the community engagement panel established at SONGS since 2014.
I recently joined the team, and I will tell you this an area where we're continually striving to improve. We do engagement by direct public outreach. We do focus group meetings with the public. We have our website that David Victor spoke about. We do site tours. I'll say that's an area that we do very well at. Anybody in the room that hasn't toured the San Onofre site, you're welcome to do that. You can sign up through the website. We run public tours just about every Saturday throughout the year. Then there's the community engagement panel.
What I've learned through the panel engagement, myself, is, first and foremost, to be open. I think accepting the feedback, using the panel as a two-way mechanism. Being accountable to the board of the CEP, to me, is very important because what David Victor and the officers want and what the board wants, what the panel wants, I desire to have my team produce in front of the community.
We desire the feedback. As David mentioned, we have made some changes in our approach.
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28 We've done the laser peening of our canister system.
We've agreed to establish a real-time rad monitoring system at the site, which we're working through the project plan for now.
There have been other adjustments we've made based on public feedback. We intend to continue that. That's really where I'll stop tonight, but I'll thank you very much for the opportunity to just say a few words about our decommissioning process, including the CEP at San Onofre. Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. Now, I'd like to turn to other members of the CEP. I know at least two of you signed up to speak tonight.
Before we get into the public comment portion, I'd like to invite you up as volunteers intimately aware of the operations of the CEP, because you're on it, to give your remarks now.
Pick the order amongst yourselves, no particular order. If there are any members of the CEP who would like to come up and give a prepared remark at this time, just comments, please feel free to do so. While this gentleman is walking to the microphone, I would ask the audience -- just a reminder -- it was mentioned that we are transcribing today so we can go back and look at notes, keep track NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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29 of what you said, what we said in our reports.
Because of that, we have a transcriptionist tonight who's creating a transcript of the meeting. When it is your turn to speak, please state your name, and then, if you wouldn't mind spelling it just for her benefit, when she later has to go back and put this together for the transcript.
Thank you.
MR. QUINN: Hi, my name is Ted Quinn.
I'm a member of the CEP since its inception. I'm also a member of Congressman Levin's task force. I'm a 42-year nuclear engineer, worked for the NRC for three years in the late 1990s. I wanted to reinforce some of the things that David spoke about. Our experience with the CEP has been really flexible and, I think, a living activity in how to address openness with the public.
I wanted to talk about four things I thought were really well done, and then one challenge.
The first one is the forum. I think it provides the community with the best forum possible for exchange of what we consider technical and administrative activities that relate to the whole schedule of decommissioning.
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30 than this for -- in two hours of dissemination of information. The second is the presentations by representatives of local emergency preparedness -- David spoke of this -- the NRC, DOE representatives, vendors involved in the decommissioning.
It's all been really beneficial to the public, I think, to hear all the different opinions or different facts that are presented based on people's technical background. The third one is technical reports that the actual committees have worked on, subcommittees assigned by the CEP have worked on technical reports that relate to dry cask storage, that relate to the decommissioning process, transportation. I think those are a value to get together people from diverse opinions. It's really been beneficial. The fourth is the recognition of each organization's role in the decommissioning process.
For example, the NRC is not responsible to move the fuel. That's not always clear. In many of the comments that we get ask the NRC to move the fuel. Everyone has a role. The Department of Energy has a role. The NRC has a role. We understand it's reactor safety. That's your primary role.
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31 But I think the community engagement panel has provided that forum to identify everyone's role. The fifth one is really a challenge. It's just the challenge we see in building bridges based on facts. I just want to re-emphasize, it's building bridges based on facts.
I found that was one of the hardest things I see that our CEP was challenged with. I think other CEPs, in the future, if you can get to the bottom line of what are the facts, I think it will benefit the public the most. Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. Other members of the CEP who would like to take the opportunity to speak at this time? Okay, with that, I'll turn it over to Donna to start the public comment portion after some logistical remarks.
MS. JANDA: Hi, good evening, everyone.
Sorry for my backside, here. I'll try and turn to everyone. First off, I just want to go over some minor housekeeping issues. The bathrooms are located outside the doors that you came in, down the hall, take a right -- take a left down the hall and to your left.
Also, the exits are right there, through those same doors, down the hall, straight ahead.
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32 While the cameras are permitted, please try not to obstruct anybody's view if you are filming. Also, if you'd be so kind to silence your cell phones before we begin the public comment period here.
If we're asked to evacuate the building, please follow any instructions from the staff here.
That will get us out safely. Also, we would like to ask that you keep the front area, beyond this front row, clear. If you have something that you would like to give to the NRC, you can hand it to either me or Brett or our security, and we can get that information to the staff. We already went over the fact that we're recording tonight, so if you're asked to spell your name out, please do so, and try not to talk over each other. It seems we haven't had any problem with that, at this point, anyway. I think I'll hand it back to Brett for a couple of other things to go over.
MR. KLUKAN: I usually give some version of this --- I do give some version of this, preferably to lay down some ground rules. Recognizing that many of you may have views which contradict each other, and very strongly at that, I would ask you -- you know, let's respect each other. What that means is that both for the sake of each other and for the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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33 transcriptionist, you don't, as Donna mentioned, talk over each other, interrupt each other.
It's my job -- the way I do my job, as facilitator, is to help you have your voice be heard.
I want to protect your time at that microphone. That is your moment to provide your comments to the NRC and for the public record. So my job is to protect that.
I play by a three strikes rule if you engage in destructive behavior, which I hope no one will, three times, I will ask you to leave. I do want to make this next point very clear, though.
Under no circumstances will threatening gestures or behavior be tolerated. It will be cause for immediate ejection from the room by one of the law enforcement officers you see positioned around here.
I have a zero tolerance policy for threatening behavior or gestures. If you feel that you've been threatened in any way by someone in the audience, please come to me or a member of the law enforcement staff positioned around the room, or our NRC security staff will take care of the situation. Thank you.
I'll turn it back to Donna to continue.
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34 they felt like they wanted to speak tonight. There's still an opportunity to sign up. I believe we have the things still out there. If not -- oh, never mind, Brett has it.
If you still want to speak, you certainly can go over to Brett to add your name. Basically, we didn't have a lot of people signed up to speak, so there'll be an opportunity for people to come up if they decide, after hearing anybody else, that they'd like to make some comments. Just be aware of that.
MR. KLUKAN: As people are signing up, just to get a sense of -- in the time remaining, how many people would like to speak tonight, you know --
you've already signed up. Let me count. Why don't we do about -- probably do about ten minutes per person. Does that sound fair to everyone? That will give some extra time at the end that people can come back and give second remarks or if someone is not sure if they wanted to speak, but then decide hey, I do want to give comments, that would give them some time to do that. Ten minutes, and we'll talk more about that in a second. I just wanted to get a sense of that.
MS. JANDA: When it is time to speak, we'll go in order of people who signed in to speak.
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35 If you're unable to come to the podium, just let us know, and we'll bring you a microphone to your seat.
Otherwise, we'll ask that you come up here, state your name, and then go ahead with your comments.
We do have a timer that we have here to give the speaker, just to view that they know how much time they have left to speak. That's really the only -- there won't be any bings or anything going off. It's really just for your use to know how much time you have. What else? Brett, did you want to go over --
MR. KLUKAN: Yes. So we've already kind of talked about this, so I'm not going to say a lot about it, but the purpose of this meeting tonight --
the thing about this meeting is they are very formalized -- very formal. We have a transcriptionist who's recording. I'm wearing a suit. I don't do this that often and it's only like a special event kind of thing -- is to formalize a brainstorming session. The purpose of this meeting tonight is to hear what you think about what the CEP should be. I used CEP.
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36 should be changed. This is -- the purpose of this is Congress told the NRC to go out and provide public comments to create a report about what -- recommendations for the CEP. And so the purpose of this is to hear from you.
And because of that, that's what we want to keep the discussion focused upon. We won't necessarily be answering your technical questions about operations at the plant. You can submit them to us. We will get back to you after the meeting.
But tonight, we'd really like the focus to remain on what ideas and thoughts for what the CAB or the CEP, anything related to what you think the CEP should be or shouldn't be.
MS. JANDA: If you have any questions on how to submit those comments, we will keep this slide up to you. We also have little cards that we have out at the desk that also tell you how to go ahead and submit comments to NRC.
MR. KLUKAN: So does anyone have a comment -- this is the first NEIMA meeting that Donna and I have done, so this is our trial run for this meeting. Does anyone have any comment -- or question, excuse me, question about our process?
Why don't you come to the podium? This NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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37 is just for questions on the NEIMA process, what the NRC is doing, what they're going to do with the comments we receive, whatnot. That's what the purpose of this is. If you have those questions, come to the podium, and then we will address them, and then we'll roll into the public comment portion.
MR. BREEN: Now?
MR. KLUKAN: If you have a question, yes, sir, please come to the microphone.
MR. BREEN: My name's Harold Breen. I am a citizen of the United States, of course, and I'm a resident of Capistrano Beach, which is a part of Dana Point. I have lived in this community for going on six years. I have been to a number of CEP meetings. I've also attended some of the NRC meetings, as well. I haven't got a long-term experience. I would say probably about 18 months.
I guess I've been to about four or five CEP meetings.
I have one quick technical question. That is there were some slides, probably about seven or eight slides. Is it possible to go back to the original slide, where the depiction of the San Onofre site is?
It was the first one. It was here when we got into the room.
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38 publicly available.
MR. BREEN: That's the one. When my name comes up later on, if possible, I'd like to go back to this slide, in order to talk about some of what I need to talk about. The other question is could this community, aside from what Edison has done -- Edison promoted and, apparently, decided early on that it was a good idea to have a community engagement panel.
A number of us have attended quite a number of meetings. On the positive side, we feel strongly that we, as members of the public, not experts in nuclear power or nuclear waste, need some good technical input from experts. In my opinion, we have got some really fine work done in that respect. On the down side, having the CEP being fairly much dominated by Edison, it can be a little bit imposing and intimidating to us thinking ahead as to what we're going to do next. That's part of your job because you're trying to find out what is the best community involvement mechanisms. My question is could this community, aside from Edison, establish a community panel and meet and organize and bring to fruition a totally separate panel from what's now called the community engagement panel? That's my question.
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39 MR. WATSON: The answer to your question is yes, but I want you to keep in mind that it would be a voluntary effort, also, as far as the NRC's concerned. Because we're an independent regulator.
We would not sponsor that group. Like I said, there's basically three types of CEPs or CABs in the country right now. There's ones that are mandated by a state, such as in Massachusetts for Pilgrim, right now, and Vermont Yankee.
Then there's the ones that are licensee sponsored. Most recently, a group of volunteers got together in New York to have a CEP or community advisory board around the Indian Point plant, but they did this all on their own. I have spoken to the group at least once on the decommissioning process, so they know what our role is. The answer is yes, and you're welcome to do whatever you can organize.
MR. BREEN: Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you for the question.
I think, sir, you had a question.
MR. STEINMETZ: My name is Jeff Steinmetz. I'm a San Clemente resident. The last name is spelled S-T-E-I-N-M-E-T-Z. My question is what is the evaluation process that you guys are using? The reason why I'm asking this is that we're NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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40 very accustomed to actually discussing things, bringing up points of fact, and actually catching people in lies, as well, and still being ignored.
I'm very curious as to what, exactly, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is doing to actually evaluate this process, to actually move forward with a recommendation to Congress. What we've seen in the past, with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as well, is that they'll take all the information, they'll go out to the public, and they'll listen to these people.
One such event is New Mexico. They don't want it, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is actually saying we're going to put a nuclear dump there anyway. What is the actual evaluation process on this? Is the public comment weighted in the final response, 20 percent, 30 percent, 5 percent? Because frankly, in the past, we've seen it probably down around 2 percent. I think that should not be the way it is. Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you for your question.
MR. WATSON: Since we're just beginning this process, we're evaluating the comments we get.
We'll be taking them and evaluating those comments and coming up with what the public thinks are the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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41 best practices and what best practices are and put them in the report. It's as simple as that.
MR. STEINMETZ: I asked you for a percentage. What is the --
MR. WATSON: I can't give you a percentage because we haven't completed the meetings, but the purpose of the report is a request to Congress. We're going to answer the mail. It's in the bill, Section 108. You're welcome to look at it.
It's on -- available from Congress, Senate Bill 512, I think it is.
We're going to answer the mail because that's what our management's going to require us to do, and we'll provide that report to Congress. We'll evaluate what comments we get from the public and make that determination of the best practices based on the feedback we get from the public.
MR. KLUKAN: Let me try to clarify. The purpose of this meeting is to collect those comments because -- because Congress told us to come here with a very specific directional mandate for us to generate a report. That section of the law, if you read that Section 108, specifies what has to be in that report.
Part of that is a written summary of the public meetings that we're required to hold, this NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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42 being one of them. What I would suggest to you is this, you'll have this transcript and then you're going to see the report, which is required to contain a summary of what happened and was said in these meetings.
Both of those documents are going to be public. If we decide to not include something, you can write a post, say hey what about this stuff at the public meeting. Here's the transcript. Here's your written summary. Why aren't these two things together? Both will be completely transparent; both will be completely out in the public, based on the way Congress set this up. Does that help a little bit?
MR. STEINMETZ: It doesn't tell me what the proper Agency response --
MR. KLUKAN: I guess we need to say ---
and then go into public comments. It's not like a -- this isn't --- well, Eurovision, where each country -- none of you know what this is, so why am I going to talk about a Eurovision? It's a music competition in Europe. All the countries compete.
There, you learned something. This isn't a thing where we will break down, all right -- your, this amount goes into this, and then only taking 20 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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43 percent.
We're collecting ideas from various people. It's not going to we're going to break down well, we only are going to take in consideration 20 percent of the public ideas. That's not how this works. As I said, this is just about collecting ideas and figuring out, of those ideas, what makes the most sense, based on our analysis.
But again, all the ideas we've collected will be available and part of the public footprints of this, so people can go and look at it. People won't be like all right, NRC, you said this, but then there's all this other stuff. Why didn't you incorporate that? That will all be out there. Does that make sense to everyone what we're trying to do here tonight?
MR. WATSON: It's not an engineering study.
MR. KLUKAN: Yes, this isn't an engineering study we're doing a risk evaluation.
This is really what do you think, and then collect all that and, based on the NRC -- granted there's going to be some judgments based on what it thinks it should recommend, but all that's still -- everything we collected is going to be publicly available. Any NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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44 other questions, just to make sure we're okay? Okay, we're going to get into public comments now. I'll let Donna find the first speaker.
MS. JANDA: First speaker, Gene Stone.
MR. STONE: Evening. My name is Gene Stone from Residents Organized for a Safe Environment and an ex-CEP member. I was on the panel for the first year. There are some good things and bad things about the panel, and I'll refer to that later.
If the NRC is seeking information on how these panels or advisory committees should be formed, it's my opinion that community engagement panels should be set up by the surrounding communities and local activists working on these nuclear issues.
Then the state should come in and give these advisory committees/community engagement panels the power to make suggestions and demand actions on certain items, which, obviously, the San Onofre CEP doesn't have. I'm totally opposed to any political appointees being part of any new community engagement panel that would be formed any place in the country.
I do, however, believe that every licensee for each nuclear power plant would be a necessity for them to be involved in any such panel because the expertise that they can provide on issues.
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45 As far as our local CEP has gone, it was well-established that the Edison community engagement panel was here to provide their point of view, their information to the public. The members of this panel were supposed to share that with their communities.
I think that's been happening, for the most part.
The other part of this community engagement panel, as David mentioned, is feedback from the public. We, as a public, have influenced many parts of the meetings over the years. We've brought our own experts in, which Edison has actually helped us do. That's been a good thing. But the bad thing is that we cannot demand action on certain items.
A community, any community, that has a nuclear power plant that's turning into a nuclear waste dump that they didn't ask for has the right to have input, real, strong, effective input that is not just heard, but is listened to. I believe that can only happen when the members of the community and the members of California Edison can sit down and have a dialogue that's not personal, but about the issues and what can be done to best suit the people of the communities that are going to have to live near this situation and to talk out all of the issues, not that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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46 we'll come to an agreement on all the issues, but at least we will be working together on these issues.
Thank you very much.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much for your comments.
MS. JANDA: Next speaker, George Allen.
MR. ALLEN: Hello, my name is George Allen, A-L-L-E-N. I do work at San Onofre, worked there for 40 years, and I've been to many, many of the CEP meetings. I agree it's been very educational. I've learned a lot from the experts and from the presentations, so I've really -- it has increased my understanding of what's going on.
One comment you made on the ground rules that you made when you came into this presentation, that's one of the things I think is one of our downfalls. Because last meeting, one of the members would have probably been asked to leave because he was mouthing obscenities to people, and they are not polite. I think there should be a civil, kind of like Robert's Rules of Order. If you cannot be civil, your permission or your privilege to speak should be withdrawn. That's just a request from me. Another request is somehow -- the California Coastal Commission has a rebuttal time. A man at the last NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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47 meeting said a fuel fleet killed somebody. That's not true, so that person got to say that, and then left.
Then another person calls somebody liars and doesn't say what he lied about, so that's kind of a character assassination. We can clean that up.
That's my message to people out there, to be civil, exchange information. I think we need to concentrate on that, and that's a good thing.
Let me see if there's anything else.
They took some questions. You have a recording secretary. This question, we'll get to you on the next meeting, so kind of a summary of the couple questions they did. They always do a good summary.
It's a very good give and take and, at the end of the meetings, they do give a chance to rebut.
It's been very helpful in that manner.
Then the other thing, just as a radiation protection technologist, people who don't understand radiation, the NRC has effectively maintained does rates to the public of less than 100 millirem to an operating plant. Nobody in the public gets that much. A plant like D.C.'s plant, it's only 25 millirem. That is an insignificant amount of cancer risk to the individual, so there's really not a danger for cancer, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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48 death, anything like that from these spent fuel installations. I would hope people get that in a more realistic perspective. Anyway, thank you very much.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you for your comments.
MS. JANDA: Next speaker, Harold Breen.
MR. BREEN: I had this put together at Office Depot today. I'll probably be referring to it. Then here's the same version, but in a smaller format for the three members.
MR. KLUKAN: Just so we put it on the transcript, you gave me a -- why don't you describe what you gave me?
MR. BREEN: This is an aerial map of the region around San Onofre, including San Onofre's approximately 100 acres of land on both sides of the freeway, a small section of the City of San Clemente on the extreme left.
MR. KLUKAN: I will give these little maps to the staff, and then I will carry around the big one for anyone who has to look at it. How about that?
MR. BREEN: You'll give me the big one at the end of the meeting.
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49 souvenir. No, I'm kidding. I'll bring it back to you.
MR. BREEN: I'll think about it. I don't know how familiar the members of the NRC who are here can see the photograph on the big screen. It's probably a little difficult for the three of you to see it. It turns out that where Edison is presently putting canisters in the ground, there's going to be 170 of them, eventually.
Their time frame is to try and put all of these 170 in the ground at the location they've selected during the next, approximately, 12-14 months, is my understanding, from what Edison's representatives have told us at prior meetings.
Those are within about 100 feet of the ocean.
They're also about five or ten feet above the high water line of the ocean near that sea wall that's in front of the former containment sections, the huge domes that eventually will be dismantled.
The site where most of the action happened at San Onofre when it was an active nuclear generating station are about 30 or 40 feet above the water. All of the structures, all of the main activities, the turbines are up there. They were at least 30 feet above the ocean. When you look at the photo, you NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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50 also see behind the two big containment structures are a lot of other buildings and parking areas between the 5 Freeway and the property on the -- called the nuclear site. That is 100 feet tall.
Across the freeway, on the other side of -- almost directly opposite, where you're looking at the two large containment structures, is another, approximately 30-acre site that is part of the agreement between the Navy and Edison and San Diego gas and electric, which happened in 1961-1962. That site is probably 110 feet above the water.
Then you'll notice, in the sheet I gave you, the aerial depiction -- that's simply Google Maps showing this site from the air. It also shows the mountains immediately adjacent to this nuclear site. The mountain actually starts up just as you get across the freeway.
It actually starts up at the ocean and continues on up until you get up about 500 or 600 feet. Seven years ago, there were four options as to what to do with the nuclear waste that we all know is going to be here for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.
There's no federal nuclear depository. We saw the furor that was occurring in Nevada when Yucca Mountain was looking like it might be a potential site to bring NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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51 a huge amount of nuclear waste to Nevada. That whole endeavor was shut down, is my understanding, about 2011. Since then, we have no viable alternative in federal general site, although we probably need 20 sites across this nation, not just one.
There were four options that were available to Edison after -- maybe a year or two before decommissioning, when Edison was the only one who really knew if their plant was going to be viable any longer. Those sites are these. No. 1 was put the waste about ten feet above the ground, right on the water, about 100 feet from high tide.
The second option was to put it on high ground, where all the parking lots are, and where all the storage yards are, where Holtec's canisters are sitting right now, waiting to go into the ground.
Put it 100 feet above the water. The third option was put it on the other side of the freeway, on lands controlled by Edison.
Edison also controls a huge amount of land underneath all their high tension wires, extending all the way across huge portions of Camp Pendleton. Option 4, don't put it anywhere near there. Build a road a little bit up the mountain, get up 200 feet, 300 feet above the freeway, getting NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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52 away from some military housing on the base, take some major land moving equipment, level the site, and put the waste where it's safe. We're trying to send a message, as part of this meeting and part of other meetings, to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and to Edison, as well, you made a bad decision.
Somewhere, sometime, 2010, 2012, Holtec came to Edison and Holtec says we can save you $30 million or $50 million, just use the site right next to the water. But there are other viable, sensible, common sense options that we hope you, as members of this panel, will take back to Arlington and take back to Washington. Let that be part of your message from this meeting. Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. I'll give you back your Post-It. So thank you for those comments. I appreciate it. You know, it will be captured as part of the transcript.
I would just, you know, re-emphasize that especially now is also your opportunity to, given your remarks you have about the CABs, CEPs and how they operate and whatnot, so recognizing, you know, I don't want to dictate to you what you say up there, but, you know, if you do have things that you want to say about the CEP or the CAB, you know, tonight's the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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53 night.
So with that, I'll turn it back to Donna.
Thank you again.
MS. JANDA: The next speaker, Angela Howe.
MS. HOWE: Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I don't think I'll be 10 minutes.
My name is Angela Howe, H-O-W-E. I'm the legal director with Surfrider Foundation National Headquarters based in San Clemente.
I've been working on the SONGS spent nuclear fuel issue for several years. And it's a concern for Surfrider Foundation throughout the country whether it's coastal power plants and spent nuclear fuel on the coast.
The Surfrider Foundation is strongly opposed to the permanent long-term storage of radioactive waste at the deactivated San Onofre Nuclear Generator Station due to its proximity to the coast line, susceptibility to geologic instability and location within a densely populated area.
We also advocate that the waste is moved as soon as possible to a consent-based, geologically stable, permanent location away from the coast.
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54 Our staff and chapters have been active at the local, state and federal levels to encourage movement for an eventual off-site storage away from the coast. And we continue to engage federal elected officials both in the District and in Washington, D.C. Both our staff scientist, Katie Day, and myself are on Representative Levin's task force as well.
For this NEIMA effort, we specifically recommend that the community advisory boards include one, a broad range of CEP members or CAB members that best represents the community it's supporting.
Two, ample time to address relevant community questions on the spot during the meeting and three, follow-up efforts. If those questions can't be answered right then and there, following up afterwards.
Now Surfrider Foundation is a grassroots organization. We do a lot of community outreach as well. So we have some best practices.
I have to emphasize constant correspondence and updates through various communications channels. For instance, Surfrider Foundation, we have a blog. And now we've gone to podcast. People like to listen to their news now.
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55 then it was Instagram and now it's, like, TikTok and Snapchat, I think. So you have to evolve and use various channels.
Proactively reach out to the community groups that are engaged. If you know someone is interested in a certain subject and an issue comes up, proactively reach out to them.
Be nimble and very responsive to community concerns and do not be immediately dismissive of arguments. I think that's where community members get enraged. And don't fail to address articulated concerns.
So this is -- I would like to thank our current CEP members for their time and efforts. This is a complicated, multifaceted issue that needs attention to several details, including permanent federal storage plan with consent based siting effort. And we are really concerned with that consent-based siting, how you generate consent on the other side of where it will be stored permanently.
And I think this effort can inform how that is done well in those communities.
The transportation plan, the onsite safety measures, those are all huge issues that we're facing in our community.
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56 All of these issues require community engagement, discussion, transparency and constant communication on various channels. So thank you for your time.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
MS. JANDA: The next speaker is Ray Lutz.
MR. LUTZ: Hello. My name is Ray Lutz.
That's L-U-T-Z. And I'm with Citizen's Oversight.
We were actually founded back in 2006. And we've done a lot of work with providing citizen oversight of government entities, boards, city councils, hospital districts, water boards, all kinds of things. We're involved activist events.
My background is in engineering, electronics engineering, a master's degree in that.
And one of my interests has been the San Onofre Nuclear Plant of which I've been involved in for a very long time and most especially right when the emergency happened and they had the failure of the steam generators.
So if you're wondering why the community is particularly engaged in this nuclear plant, it's because we've had these big mistakes. And it wasn't an earthquake or a tsunami or a terrorist attack.
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57 could not get the design right when they replaced the steam generators.
So what makes you think it can operate in an emergency correctly either? What makes you think they can do the right with the spent fuel? Of course, the public knows that it's very hard to put much trust in them.
So basically I view this a little bit differently than what you've heard with respect to everyone concerned. The people on the board they do the best job that they can under the circumstances.
David Victor does a great job within the bounds that he's allowed to conduct.
But this is an organization -- this is a board which contrived from the beginning to be an organ of Edison, the operator. It is not independent. They pick and choose who is going to be on it. Sometimes they boot people off that they don't like, outspoken people that are taken out or their life is made miserable being on the board and so they leave.
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58 or many other things that occur.
So we view, at Citizen's Oversight, we have a view that the public is responsible for our government. It's our job to oversee everything, this whole big government. It's very hard to do. There's a lot of different facets yet we're supposed to oversee it all.
So these boards should assist us in this oversight role. David Victor says it's not an oversight body. Of course, it is. Everything to do with the public or the public's involved, we're overseeing you.
We're overseeing you tonight. We're giving your oversight about what you should do. This is information from the public. The government is below us. We're on top. We're telling you what to do.
It's a different concept. Most people think the government is up above, and they tell us what to do. And we're the poor little public down below. You've got to look at it the right way. We're on top, and we're the ones in charge. So we've got to take our role seriously.
Now the problem here is that we've got a number of regulatory agencies. The CPUC only handles NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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59 the money, the rate making. How much can they charge for the power that they deliver? And the NRC only handles safety.
There's a lot of decisions that the NRC does not dictate to these for-profit organizations.
For example, do you have to build a nuclear plant at all? No. That's a decision that the for-profit organizations made a long time ago. They didn't have to do it.
Where should we put the spent fuel facility? No one tells them. They get to decide that on their own. Decisions that will have implications to the community for thousands of years potentially are being made by an organization that has a horizon of the next quarterly report.
So there's a big gap in between what the NRC does and what the CPUC does, a huge cavernous gap with no oversight at all. And we're entrusting these for-profit, investor-owned utilities to make the best decisions possible.
Now we have this organization, the Community Engagement Panel, which is designed to not provide any oversight, designed to be just a public relations tool of the utility.
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60 provide advice. It's very inept. It can't have any power going out to try to get things from the government in terms of laws changed and other things.
Sure, David Victor can go up and say, I'm the chairman, but I have to speak for myself because we can't reach any decisions on this board. This board can't ever decide anything. Now that's pretty bad.
We have also a different model up the coast, which is the Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee, which was set up not by the utility but through a settlement process of the CPUC. And so they are not as much of a conflict of interest there.
So I was comparing these. And I'll give you this paper when I get a chance to finish it. But basically we can look at independence. Is the CEP independent? Absolutely not. Everything that it does is pretty much dictated by the utility.
Now I will say this. It's been better than we thought. A lot of the activists said, look, we're going to boycott. We're not going to get involved because this is just a piece of crap. It's just going to be a tool of the utility.
We said, well, we're going to have to go, you know. They're going to do stuff. And they're going to say things and act like things are happening.
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61 And we've got to be there to watch it. So we are.
And I think the public has done a really good job of watching this group. And they've done better than I thought they might do.
But are they independent? No. The CEP is not independent. The people are selected by the utilities. Some were kicked off because they were too outspoken on the board.
The utility sets the agenda. There's no mechanism for the public to help set the agenda for what they do. They maybe say, gee, David, can you put this on? There's not a real mechanism. There's just whether or not they want to do it.
The board meets in private sometimes.
They have to go lucky and have meals in the back somewhere. It took us a while to even get water provided for the public. Several hours of meeting and no water. Finally, some people were bringing it anyway.
Diablo Canyon has excellent independence because they're set up separately from the utility.
They have the ability to actually dig in and require, hire other experts, get other points of view, be able to question the utility when they come in in a rigorous way, something that you don't get out of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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62 these volunteers from the community who came in knowing nothing about nuclear stuff and falling into line and expecting the utility was telling them exactly what was the case.
You know, they've learned a lot. They've come around and actually they're starting to respect those activists out there a little bit more and what their opinions were. They're starting to realize, gee, you know, all this time what they've been saying is true even though I reluctantly have to admit it they might say.
Now credibility, does the CEP have a credibility? And if they were, no, they don't make the decisions so how can they be credible? They're just members of the community with no real background even though they've learned a lot.
The Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee is composed of just three, which is too small of a number. But they are experts in the field so they have more credibility.
The decision-making process, there is none. None. Okay. David Victor says, oh, it would be too much trouble to have decision-making.
Poppycock. We need to have decision-making. And I can point this out by the fact that other groups have NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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63 now started to form outside of it. The expert groups have started forming.
Mike Levin has his own expert group.
Why? Because the CEP doesn't do anything. It doesn't chart a course to try to do anything except just to provide information from the utility. In contrast, the Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee does have a decision-making process with votes.
Investigative power, there is really no investigative power to the CEP. It can't investigate. It can't subpoena documents, look into what happened. We have this failure of the can dropping, almost dropping 18 feet. The NRC has suppressed the documentation. They won't reveal what happened. An attorney says let's open it up and find out.
Now why is the CEP not asking those questions? Because they don't have the guts to do it? Because they don't care? I don't think any of those -- maybe it's just because they don't think it's -- I don't know. Why aren't they asking the NRC what did you do? Why did you cover this up? Why did you go along with the lies of Edison and not report this? Nothing happening.
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64 It's a get along kind of a thing, a patty cake, like attorneys playing patty cake. We want to act like we're doing something without actually doing anything because then we'll irritate people. We don't want to irritate anybody, do we? I disagree.
I think we should irritate people when it's of the risk that this is.
Is it useful for the public? I think that it has been pretty useful for the public, but it's difficult for the public to work with it.
Constantly, the public, we have a long meeting. We have a lot of things to follow-up. They let us say three minutes of comments, cut off immediately by David Victor. I'll say in a very rude manner. And he knows I believe this. He could let people close their comments. No. He cuts them off in the middle of a sentence.
And there could be mechanisms for the public to contribute papers. Get them discussed.
Have some sort of a give and take. Nothing like that occurs. And we've tried it, but it won't happen. So that's something that could be improved there.
It does have good live stream and a reasonably good website. You can't download the videos though. They've made it so they're NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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65 undownloadable because they don't want the public editing them and making clips out of it or something.
I've asked them to make them downloadable. They refuse.
Reporting. The Diablo Canyon Safety Committee makes annual reports. I've never seen a report from the CEP. Zero. I've been there six years. No reports.
The bottom line is that the CEP is largely theater with small opportunities for the public to be effective. It does not reach decisions or offer advice. It cannot investigate. It has no real power. It is a PR arm of Edison.
The Diablo Canyon Safety Committee is more substantial with decision-making power. It can reach positions and hire consultants. It can investigate and has real power. That's the kind of thing we need. We need something with real power that the public can use to provide the oversight that they need to provide.
The model of the CEP should be avoided if at all possible. Do not use the CEP as the best practice even though the people in it will say that it is. Of course, they're going to look at it that way because they've been in it, and they're kind of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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66 constrained by the constraints of what it is. And within that, I think they've done a pretty good job within the constraints.
Independence is key. Now how to select these people, I didn't really -- that are on it.
We've got to get more of a cross-section, I think this has been mentioned, of the activists and people that are really quite knowledgeable about nuclear technology that have been involved in it for years and years. Take them in, embrace and cherish.
So I believe that the CABs should be empowered to consider safety issues when the NRC does not have a differentiating opinion.
Let me give you an example. Fuel pools versus ISFSI, the NRC says both are perfectly safe.
You can put an ISFSI anywhere you want on the earth.
It's fine. Safe anywhere. Not really. Not when you're sticking it right next to the ocean. That has a different level of safety in the minds of the public.
So when an NRC is not differentiating in safety concerns, I think that these bodies should be able to and haven't been able to because they say, oh, well, that's a safety concern so the NRC would do that.
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67 Now do I think that having an independent would dilute it or make it so that it would be ineffective? David Victor says no. We've got to have it run by the utility or it's not going to be effective on getting information. I completely disagree.
The utilities are going to be there.
They are going to have their point of view. They are going to be setting it no matter how the thing is run even if it's run independently. So I think somehow we've got to get this out from under the wing of the utility and put back in more control of the public rather than as a tool of the utility. And I'll be sending in a more detailed list of my remarks. Thank you very much.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
MS. JANDA: The next speaker is Dan Stetson.
MR. STETSON: I don't have any remarks.
Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
MS. JANDA: Madge Torres.
MS. TORRES: Hi. My name is Madge Torres, M-A-D-G-E T-O-R-R-E-S. I'm with Citizen's Oversight.
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68 I'm going to talk about the flaws of the current Community Engagement Panel. The time that is given to the speakers that come from the community is so limited that it's an insult to the diligent work that these volunteers put in to saving my life.
And so if you can imagine, some of us come from 50, 75 miles away. And some come all the way from Los Angeles on the train to be able to speak, and they're only given three minutes. And that's not realistic.
This is a group of people that are educated, hardworking, involved and they deserve more than three minutes. They get up at sometimes in the morning at 6 o'clock and work all day without even a break for meals just to be able to make a presentation, and they're only given three minutes.
The armed police that are at our Community Engagement Panels must be there to intimidate us. But we have never made any threats.
We never use any bad language. The language, we had issues at the last NRC meeting, a week ago, was an aberration. We're just retired hippies and some nerds.
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69 is completely littered with armed police officers.
For what? That's stupid. Those people make a lot of money in overtime. That's coming out of somebody's pocket. And if it's coming out of Southern California Edison, then that just means that they're going to raise my rates again.
Let's see. Tom Palmisano's function seems to be to run out the clock so that the activists can be even more limited in their ability to interact with the people that they're trying to interact with, their fellow activists and the members of the Community Engagement Panel.
And the makeup of the Community Engagement Panel certainly is a problem. There was a Board of Supervisor's member that never, ever came to any meetings ever. And he was given a space at the table when that could have been filled by one of us, somebody who cares enough to show up.
And the one person that I saw that was active was removed. She would ask questions of Tom Palmisano and she would say -- and she finally said when are these people's questions going to be addressed? You never address any of the things they bring up and then she was gone.
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70 time. So Tom Palmisano just, like, drones on forever when he could make a succinct presentation just so that we have no opportunity to make a thorough presentation, which would be possible if we were given a decent amount of time or if we were able to delegate our time, which is kind of a workaround that shouldn't have to be necessary.
And then the fine, this is maybe nothing to do with the Community Engagement Panel, but it just really just kind of shows what the whole mindset of NRC is. And it's really distressing because you are our recourse.
And the fine that was given to Southern California Edison was so minuscule and the justification that was given was, well, the canister
-- it would have been really a bigger fine, but the canister didn't happen to drop that time.
And that was a ridiculous statement because if somebody does everything wrong all the way to the point where they didn't even engage the safety straps, they just left them on the ground and they were given a tiny, tiny fine when the damage that would have been done, although they deny it, would have been substantial.
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71 certainly would have meant that the entire can would have been unretrievable. And for them to just say, well, I didn't happen to go wrong that time so we're going to give them a small fine. It would have been way bigger if only it had slipped off the edge.
There was no material difference in the way the canister had been handled, whether it would have gone off the edge. I mean, they didn't do anything right. And they were given such a tiny fine it just shows that there's really no oversight and no impetus for Southern California Edison to do the right thing about anything because there's no consequences.
And I was thinking that the reason that the policemen are there to protect, apparently, the Community Engagement Panel members from members of the audience or the activists.
And, I mean, why do they think that we would do anything to them? And then I thought, well, maybe they're fearful that we know that they were going to run the generator at 80 percent capacity when it was leaking. And they think that we know that they're trying to kill us, and we're mad at them.
Or maybe they think that because they're burying that nuclear waste so close to the beach when they never needed to.
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72 And they did that whole thing so underhandedly up in Long Beach with no notice, barely any notice whatsoever that they were going to make that decision that day and the ex parte communications ahead of that meeting, all of those things, the meeting is in Poland.
All of the things that they did wrong, and they think, well, maybe the members of the community that are coming to talk to us know what we did, and they might try to kill us so we have to protect ourselves with armed guards. So is that it?
I don't know.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you for your comments.
MS. JANDA: And the next speaker is Bert Moldow.
MR. MOLDOW: I received notification of this meeting at 3:35 this afternoon. And I'm sure that you would have had this room filled, okay, if enough notice had gone out to enough people. I don't know why it didn't.
I'd like to sort of represent the position of my mayor. I'm from Laguna Woods. And it was the first community that basically took a position on the nuclear waste storage, okay. And essentially the town council said we understand, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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73 okay, that there is no permanent waste site. And we understand that it's possible that this stuff is going to be around for quite a period of time. Nobody knows, 20 years, 50 years, but what we want to tell you is that we want you to provide the safest storage method possible so that we would be less concerned.
So what did they do? They put it in canisters, 5/8ths inch thick. Canisters that cannot be inspected if there is a crack. And we all know that the NRC says if a canister is cracked, you cannot ship it.
Interesting. So that canister is going to stay there for what? Forever? That's number one.
Two, okay, besides being cracked, we know that it can't be inspected. If it is cracked, it can't be repaired. Is this safe? You can't detect the crack. You can't repair it if it is cracked.
It's going to stay onsite forever?
Oh, no, well, what we'll do is we can repackage it. But how are you going to repackage it?
Are you going to remove it from the canister and put it in another canister? You can't do that. It's never been done before.
No, you know, what we can is we can use the waste pool. Okay. And then put it into the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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74 waste pool and get another canister. No, no. There isn't going to be waste pool now because part of the decommissioning process says we're going to destroy those waste pools.
Well, lots of luck. You're going to have hundreds of canisters. Well, not hundreds, but a little over 100 canisters sitting there. Maybe 1, 2 or 3 are cracked. And what are you going to do?
They're going to start leaking. Oh, well, that's all right. Nothing serious is going to happen. Oh, maybe a little cancer here, a little cancer there.
Okay.
And then, of course, let's put it only 100 feet from the ocean. How many people know that in 1908 -- I did some research -- in 1908 there were four tropical storms that hit the Southern Coast of California.
And, of course, now that we're facing the things called climate change. Who knows what it's going to be within the next 10, 15 or 20 years with regard to the Southern Coast of California. These are all possibilities.
Now my mayor is going to tell you that, you know, she's never equipped to sit on a CEP. She's a politician. But she just doesn't have the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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75 technical knowhow. And she'll tell you, you know, what you've got to put on that committee is people that are technically aware and competent of the problem, not politicians.
I think, Ray, who really hit the nail on the head and -- Ray John. So if you're going to do something, don't form a CEP that is made up of a bunch of politicians who know nothing about the technical aspects of the problem and respect what these towns in this area are saying about what's happening here.
They're saying we want the safest possible storage mechanisms possible. And I'll tell you right now, we don't have them. Because we've asked about how are you going to transfer something from a cracked canister into another canister. What are you going to do about this? We're not getting answers to these questions.
What are you going to do if water fills one of those concrete cylinders? You have no outlet for that water. There are a number of questions that have been asked time and again and have never been answered. Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you for your comments.
MS. JANDA: Next speaker is Ted Quinn.
MR. QUINN: Oh, okay, thank, sir.
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76 MS. JANDA: Jeff Steinmetz?
MR. STEINMETZ: Hi, good evening and thanks for giving us the opportunity to actually put forth how we feel about the CEP meeting or CEP panel here in San Onofre and what we think should actually be done.
The Southern California Edison Community Engagement Panel, also commonly referred to as the Southern California Community Engagement Panel, was set up by Southern California Edison to control the narrative and that's really all it was set up for.
Each panel member is hand-selected by Edison with no community input.
At the last CEP meeting, only one panel member asked questions. It was an embarrassment.
The so-called community members, elected officials, selected by Southern California Edison to represent the community proved themselves to be the most intellectually uncurious people in the state.
Seriously, you can watch the tape. The only person that asked any questions was a brand new panel member at the last CEP meeting.
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77 me, it wasn't because Southern California Edison did such a thorough job of presenting the information, not in the least. Their content was filled with lies and omissions and blatant lies.
The CE panel cherry-picked the questions that they take. And, the questions are not responded to in good faith. The public does not get an opportunity to ask follow up questions. Southern California Edison representatives are experts at parsing language and frequently, they do not respond to questions with the full story.
The community is not given an opportunity to clarify the response. This is critical. When someone is actually trying to obfuscate the information of their -- and you don't get the opportunity to actually ask any follow up questions, you can't get a clear understanding, both publically or personally. And, this is set up by design by the CEP panel.
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78 and you can review them all. And, you'll see him doing this.
If you make points that were actually undercutting what they were saying, they would do their best to actually undercut you. This is standard practice on the CEP panel here in -- by Southern California Edison and it should stop.
The communicate gave the panel lies to the public with no consequences. This is Tom Palmisano lying to the public at the August 9th meeting.
(AUDIO PLAYS)
MR. STEINMETZ: The real reason why they stopped is because they almost dropped a canister 18 feet. But Tom got up here and said, or excuse me, it wasn't at this facility, but he got up at the CE panel and lied. And, about 15 minutes later, David Fritch got up and actually told everybody the truth.
But what happened to Tom? Nothing. He wasn't removed from the panel. I played this very tape to the panel, I think, either two meetings or one meeting afterwards and they all had the same response. They all just sat there like bumps on the log and nothing was said. Apparently, it's fine for panel members, or excuse me, for Southern California NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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79 Edison to lie to the panel and to lie to the public, to be proven as liars, and for the panel to do nothing about it.
The Diablo Canyon group is a much better model, although, I agree, it should not be a panel that has political appointees. Southern California Edison PG&E and SPG&E are very powerful entities in this state. They're so powerful, they recently got the okay from the state legislator to burn people alive and then just bill rate payers more to cover the law suits.
While this is not a federal issue, it is the status of things here in -- of things in California. Now, Southern California Edison PG&E, they can burn people right out of their homes and destroy entire communities and just raise the rates to cover the law suits. It's a disgrace.
You can't put these people basically that have this kind of power with the state legislature to make political appointees either by the government or the state legislature. Because that will fail and you will not be serving the community in any capacity.
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80 actually just control the narrative and not listen to the public and just do whatever you want to do, because that's what the CEP panel does here.
Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
MS. JANDA: The next speaker is Jim Wade.
MR. WADE: Yes, you had that correct, Jim Wade.
I hadn't planned on speaking tonight, but ten minutes is nice. I don't really where to start, but maybe when I was 14 and go to my -- went to my first surfing trip down in San Onofre, now it's become kind of a popular worldwide place. And, I just thought, I didn't really know much about nuclear power. And, I thought government would keep us safe.
And, at some point, I moved down to San Clemente because this whole event.
I've been around the world three times, and San Clemente's one of the nicest areas in the world. And, but not now.
So, I rented out a room to a person that worked at the plant. And, he had a two-year contract.
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81 for my two-year contract to be up and I'm out of there. And, I just thought, oh, he, maybe he's exaggerating because I know that our government and Edison and NRC and Coastal Commission would protect us. So, I didn't think much about it.
So, when was it, seven years ago, the plant got shutdown and I was really happy that actually tears came to my eyes. And, I thought, oh, great.
Then about four years later, I heard that none of the -- well, I get mixed opinions, but hardly any of the nuclear waste had been moved. And, I thought, this is odd.
So, then, I started being more active and coming to a lot of meetings over the last three years.
And, I hate to -- what was my thing I wrote down here -- I hate to name-call and I don't do it. But I'm going to do it. And, what I've seen over the last three years is a comical circus.
And, each month, or a few months ago by, something happens that just blow my mind. I can't even believe that this race would be stored on the beach.
I know when I was living in San Clemente, there were some evacuation plans that didn't make NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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82 sense to me. And, there were some advice of taking potassium iodine. Make sure you have it in your medicine cabinet. You know, but anyway.
This public speaking is really man's number one fear.
There was a speaker at San Clemente City Hall about six months ago. And, he was talking --
his whole topic was about earthquakes, nothing to do with San Onofre and I don't really know why he was there. But I asked him at the end of the talk, I said, if they knew then what they know now, would they have been able to build the plant? And, he said, absolutely not. And, I just went, oh, that's interesting.
But what really is hard for me to believe and a number of my friends that I've talked to, probably a couple hundred, I just wonder why when Edison had permission to take the nuclear waste, I guess to Yucca Mountain in Nevada, and it just seems to me like, and I've had to deal with the COASTAL Commission quite a few times that they would be protecting us. And they would -- but, I don't know, it's I'm talking kind of out of order.
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83 San Francisco, first I tried Long Beach. They didn't know much. I tried San Diego, they didn't know much.
I talked to San Francisco and I talked to the head guy. He said, I have no -- we -- COASTAL Commission has no jurisdiction at all in that area. We can make recommendations, but we can't enforce anything. And, I thought that was odd. Why do we even have COASTAL Commission?
What else here? So, I would think that
-- I think the newspapers and the other news media really dropped the ball back in whenever it was, 1970 or something, I don't when Nevada decided they won't take the waste. Why do they let them continue to make waste when they didn't have a place to put it?
And then, I found out this is the case all around the world, really. But I would think that they should have been finding a place to take it, immediately working on that right away.
Oh, and I hope -- I'm just over the last three years have been learning kind of on a part-time basis more and more about this. And, I hope that everyone that's involved with this situation would watch that documentary on Chernobyl because I knew this San Onofre was bad. But after watching that, it's far worse than I even thought. You know, not NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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84 to mention Three Mile Island or Chernobyl or Fukushima.
Which reminds me, the Japanese, I don't know what he's called, president, he -- when Fukushima happened, I don't really know the whole story, but I talked to some people that met him. And, he was --
he got pretty much kicked out of being the, I forgot what he's called, president or whatever.
He came here and thought this whole SONGS thing was just ridiculous. It's really risky. I know he made some public statements about that.
Oh, back to watching Chernobyl, and I hope -- it would be nice if everyone involved would all -- would take a walk down on the beach down there.
And, just to see it and feel it and see how wonderful it is. And, it's, you know, pristine, one of the few pristine areas, you know, south of San Francisco all the way down to San Diego.
A little bit about the canisters, or a lot about the canisters. Again, I'm not a technician or anything, but what I've gathered is, it's really risky, you know. I'm sure the heat inside of these are 300 to 400 degrees all the time and they have to be continually cooled. And, it's cooled with air that comes through the double walls. And, it's salt NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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85 air, salt deteriorates. It's really scary.
And, like the one gentleman pointed out, the tropical storm that was around 1908, I was reading about that and that wiped out quite a bit of the coastline. It would just really ruin that area. It just -- I saw some pictures what it did in Long Beach, just destroyed many, many homes.
So, I'm just wondering when Yucca Mountain backed out, I'm just guessing that Edison just said, we'll do something with the waste when we kind of have to. And then, they just, although, yes, so they're -- I'm thinking what only makes sense to me is I thought, what would be the cheapest way?
I didn't even know AlTech told them that we can save you guys millions of dollars and Edison's probably going yes, let's just take the cheapest way out. And, it's kind of obvious to me, that's what they did. You know?
Which when I've mentioned this to a lot of people that this toxic waste is being buried a 100 feet from the water. And, I've been there many times, even though it scares me to go down there. I've seen it personally, it's really scary.
But so, in the last three years, I hear a lot of people, you know, David Victor, he was on NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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86 the first panel that I was going to and nothing's changed over the last three years at all. I'd hear his say, yes, we need to move this waste. But I never hear any specifics, ever. I just think people need to search for an area and for the greater good, find a place.
Or, I understand that, I mean, a lot of people say we just cannot move this stuff. It has to go back to the reactors and go back underwater and put it in safer containers and then it came be moved.
Well, I understand that's not possible.
Did you -- is my time getting up?
MR. KLUKAN: Though, yes, I, again, I never like interrupting anyone, but, unfortunately, your ten minutes is up. I just wanted to make sure, I'm trying to be sensitive, it's past 8:00 and I know we still have some additional speakers. But did you have any comments you want to put on the record regarding the CEP or have in particular just any passing thoughts on that before we move on?
MR. WADE: Yes, sure. I've been going at this for three years. There's a lot of months past, and all these meetings, there's never anything specific. There's never any forward movement.
That's about it.
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87 MR. KLUKAN: All right, well, thank you, I appreciate it.
MS. JANDA: Next speaker, Judy Jones.
MS. JONES: Good evening. I'm Judy Jones of San Clemente. And, I'm a frequent attendee of CEP meetings and even NRC meetings for probably more than a decade. So, it's a lot of listening and not really seeing a lot of results. I think many people have reiterated that point.
And, my concern overall has been that we should make the safest decisions on everything, where we're putting the dry storage, how we're transporting it, what canisters we have, all these things should be the safest that we can do. And, we don't really always seem to make those decisions.
But in terms of commenting on the CEP, I think that David Victor mentioned some very good points about having trust between the community, the CEP, the SCE, NRC, there's a lot of work to be done on building up trust. And, I think that we maybe do have some possibilities of working towards that.
Maybe even David Victor has known and he seems to trust me more. But whatever.
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88 think that Gene Stone and Ray Lutz made some very good points about that.
I happen to have attended a Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Commission meeting. The three gentlemen there were very well educated in nuclear engineering. And, they had conversations. They had interaction with the audience. They would respond to your questions, as you mentioning them.
So, it was very dynamic and open. Not a big audience, which maybe isn't as exciting as our CEP meetings. But I do think that they had some very good process and way to be independent and not be beholding to the Diablo Canyon PG&E people.
And, another thing, I do think that community leaders should be involved in our CEP. I'm not sure that we have the right way to involve them, but it's very important that our cities, our school boards, our country governments, our other stakeholders and probably a few more activists and other organizations would be a good idea to be there.
But I do think that these people did not get elected to those positions. They have because of their nuclear energy background and expertise.
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89 a tour of San Onofre and be told some things by Southern California Edison and go ahead.
I happen to be a very long-term member of the League of Women Voters. And, it's my understanding from some people who remember some of things that when nuclear energy became an energy source, the League of Women Voters worked with some government groups to have nuclear energy 101 training. And, maybe we need to revive that and have an independent group do something like that.
So, that's really my second point is educating whoever the panelists are.
And, in general, I think that we don't want to have a panel that is run by the utilities.
We do want some independent people. And, we do want something that has some teeth in it, that they're able to do something and not just discuss.
Plus, I think one other little item that maybe going to the League of Women Voters meetings and that they are always having meals and tea and various things around my life. Being a little bit considerate of your audience and, as someone else mentioned, we had to protest in order to get water.
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90 feel that they're appreciated and they're being hospitable.
So, thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
MS. JANDA: The next speaker, Kevin Higgins?
MR. HIGGINS: Hello, my name's Kevin Higgins. I'm all the way from Temecula. I wasn't going to speak tonight, but there's certain things that I -- that have never been answered at any of these meetings. I probably come to, I'd say, 15, 20 of these meetings. And, one is the evacuation plan.
If these canisters leak, nothing's ever been discussed on the time frame that the citizens have to evacuate. If you look at the 5 freeway, there's no way you can evacuate. So, how long do we have? That's one of the big questions I've always wanted to know.
The other question is what's stored?
What exactly radiation is stored? Nothing's ever been said in any of these meetings. It's like, these are the canisters, this is where they're buried.
It's by the ocean. It is a risk but, at the same time, it's not that big of a risk. So, why are the citizens worried? Never anything's been discussed NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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91 about that.
The other thing was, is I drove by in January of 2012 and I saw steam coming out it. At one of the meetings, the NRC panel, I think, was over in the school district over in San Juan Capistrano.
They said that radiation leaked enough was a milk carton. That's all about all that leaked.
And then, supposedly, a friend of mine told me a whistle blower came forth and said, no, no, no. Much more was leaked at that time. We'll never know, I mean, that's the sad part is we're citizens.
You know, we pay our taxes, we do what we're supposed to be doing. We trust, you know, Southern California Edison's doing what they're doing. But those questions have never been answered.
There's never been an evacuation plan put in place where I know how much time I have to get my family out. What type of radiation is in these canisters? How deadly is it if it does get in the body? How long does it take to affect the body? You know, we've all got kids and we've all got, you know, people we care about.
If these questions are never answered, then it puts me in a situation where I don't trust the NRC. I don't trust Southern California Edison.
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92 I don't trust anything that you guys are doing because, you know, these questions should be answered.
Sorry, anyway, and the other thing is, is why is there not another panel that represents the citizens? Like, for example, experts on our side?
When I come to these meetings, I just watch, you know, people such as yourself. And, you guys are experts and I appreciate it and I absolutely think, hey, you know what? You guys are doing what you can. But somehow or another, there's no truth.
It seems as though everything is disregarded.
Like, for example, when this first all started happening, I went to a meeting down in Escondido. And, a Southern California representative said to the panel, I mean, to the city councilman that was down at Escondido, I will drive down here with iodine pills if that leaks or something's wrong there.
And, I've got them in my trunk and I will pass them out to your guys. I say to myself, well, that's kind of selfish. What about the citizens?
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93 anyway.
The other question I have is that, if we're such a sophisticated, incredible, you know, United States, the most powerful country in the world, how come Fukushima has canisters that are so sophisticated over ours and why are we trying to do this with 8.4 million people, surrounding area?
I don't know what the evacuation zone is.
I've been told ten miles, five miles, twenty miles, hundred fifty miles, none of these questions have ever been answered by the NRC, Southern California Edison.
I've been probably, I'd say, 20 meetings, you know. Normally, I don't speak out, but -- so, the main questions I have, evacuation plans never been discussed.
The next thing, what's radiation stored in these canisters that the public should be aware of?
The next question that I have is, if they do leak, how long do we have to evacuate our homes?
To get our families out? How long do we have?
And, if the canisters do have scratches on them, what's the significance? Because I've lived in Hawaii and I've seen how quick, I don't care what NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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94 type of metal you have, when the salt air hits that, you start to see salt crystals. And, then, you start to see the rust. And, it doesn't matter what type of metal it is.
So, all these questions, I've been to tons of these meetings, they've never been answered.
None of these question, evacuation plan, what type of radiation is stored in these canisters? How long do we have to evacuate? What's the procedure if one of the canisters does leak?
And, the other question I have, is what is your warning system? Do you have anything that's going to indicate to the public like a siren or an app? Let's face the fact, what happened with that earthquake that just happened? The earthquake hit, it came and there's supposed to be an app indicating to people in Los Angeles that have the app. Didn't even -- the earthquake was gone, I think it was almost what? Up to eight hours before they got the app?
So, those are the questions that I have.
And, I wish the NRC, and I wish Southern California Edison would like answer the questions so the public don't leave here every single night thinking, oh, you know what? That was useless.
That's -- thank you.
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95 MR. KLUKAN: So, thank you.
I just, thank you for your comments on the CEP. And, regarding your technical questions, so, as I mentioned here earlier tonight, we just --
we don't have the experts here with me tonight to answer those kinds of questions. Like when you brought experts or the staff here to talk about how the cabs, what would do the cabs is underneath my technical anyway.
So, what I'm hearing from you, though, is that you feel strongly that we have not communicated well on these issues. And, we come to so many meetings and not publically answered.
So, what I can commit to you is, we're not going to address it at this meeting. We've been writing down your questions. You can stick around after the meeting out there and then give us your contact information. We'll get you something back and some early dialogue with you on the technical questions.
But we simply don't have the expertise here to answer those questions tonight and it would be unfair to engage in that kind of dialogue when we just don't have the people we need to to discuss those things.
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96 MR. HIGGINS: But that's a comment on the CEP, they're not answering those questions. That's really a comment.
MR. KLUKAN: Okay. We, yes, I'm not disagreeing with that at all. Then, we will take that as the comment is also that CEP is not answering those kind of questions either as an individual statement.
All right, I just wanted to make that clear. That's why you're not hearing us answer those questions right now.
So, the next, Donna, if you would?
Thanks.
MS. JANDA: Nikki Bay?
MS. BAY: Hi, thank you so much for giving me some opportunity to talk today. I -- my name is Nikki Bay. I am from Japan. English is my second language, so it be a little bit messy, but I will try my best.
Do you remember Fukushima nuclear melt -
- triple meltdown? It happened eight and a half years ago. There are so many people in Japan, they are starting to forget about the Fukushima and TEPCO and government and also major media, they are trying to cover up Fukushima.
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97 Because Fukushima is still leaking. And, TEPCO doesn't know how to deal with contaminated soil and also contaminated water.
I wish I could go back to March 11, 2011, eight and a half years ago. Japan was a beautiful country. But after nuclear meltdown, everything has been changed.
Right now, at the Fukushima leak site, there are so many huge tanks. And, I heart recently there are one million hundred tanks. These tanks are huge, probably maybe half size of this room. And, more than over a million tanks are covered with Fukushima dioxide. And, TEPCO was announced that recently that they don't have enough space to put the tanks by the end of this year.
Also, around the Fukushima, there are no more space by the 2023. So, beautiful Fukushima are covered with contaminated soil and contaminated tanks.
And, still, can you imagine 50,000 people were not able to go back to their home. They lost their home, family, and friends. And, they are not able to go back to their home, even though the government is safe to come back.
And, also, every day, 4,000 workers at NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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98 the Fukushima site, they are working on the horrible conditions.
Japanese government and TEPCO and now major media, they have been telling Japanese people lies. They said nuclear power is a safe, cheap future energy. But it's not, after Fukushima accident.
And then, now, the government is trying to cut the compensation to the people who was to evacuate or who has already evacuate because we're going to have the Olympics next year. So, they are trying to cover up and trying to bring back people to Fukushima site. And, they even have a part of Olympics in Fukushima. It's unbelievable.
Now, Fukushima is covered with huge contaminated bags, tons of tons of contaminated bags.
And, also tanks. And, TEPCO doesn't know how to deal with these contaminated tanks and they are eventually going to dump the contaminated water into the ocean
-- of our ocean.
And, I have a really good friend, her name is Ukiyo Komar (phonetic). Her house was 1.2 kilometers from Fukushima Daiichi when the meltdown happened. The government told her to evacuate.
She thought she can come back to her home.
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99 thought that she can come back. But after nuclear accident, she has been evacuating to Tokyo.
She said twice so far she was able to go back to her house with car -- full with these suits.
And, last time I saw her two years ago, two summers ago, in front of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's residential area, there are protests every Friday night from 6:00 to 8:00. She comes to protest every Friday because she said she doesn't want to give up for our future, for our children.
And, last time she saw her, she hold my hands and with tears, she told me, please let what happened to her to the world. Because she doesn't want anyone to have the same experience that she had in Fukushima.
So, I know you guys are trying to do your best, but I don't want to see same things happen here, beautiful California.
So, I hope you really listen to our voice.
Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
Okay, so, just a little check on where we are right now since it's about, oh, close to 8:30.
So, we have to be out of the room tonight at -- by NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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100 9:00. Okay? The reason for that being is it was explained to me is that the staff here tonight, all the microphones, sorry, have to come and clean up and they don't get paid after a certain hour and I don't want to make the staff here have to stay longer to clean this place up. You get my point, I'm not explaining myself well, but really we have to be out by 9:00.
So, we have 30 minutes left, up to 30 minutes left. So, I'm going to now go to -- we've exhausted our list. Is there anyone who's not spoken would like to speak?
(NO RESPONSE)
MR. KLUKAN: Going once.
(NO RESPONSE)
MR. KLUKAN: Going twice.
(NO RESPONSE)
MR. KLUKAN: Sold. All right. Anyone who has spoken who would have -- would like to say something more? There's going to be one, two, all right.
So, we're going to go in the order in which you originally spoke. So, we'll go first to you and then to you. Okay?
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101 David Victor, again. Sorry to take the floor.
Again, a lot of important things have been said.
There's a lot of anxiety about the technology, including from -- for reasons that were just articulated.
I wanted to say six things very briefly that are specifically related to the mission of your task force.
First is Section 108, the statute talks about you gathering information about advisory boards in the broadest conception of the word advisory.
And, that goes directly to this issue of membership of the CEP and I suspect to other bodies.
The reason that elected officials, people call them politicians, I think it's important to call them elected officials, these are people who have been selected by their communities through democratic processes to represent the communities and the voices and the variety of viewpoints there.
The reason they're on the CEP and they're the dominate part of the CEP is precisely because of that role. It is not because they're experts. In fact, if we had a whole expert driven process, then that would defeat the purpose.
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102 engagement mode is to engage with the public and people who are particularly well positioned to do that. And, that is why elected officials play such a central role.
Secondly, I just want to very quickly clarify something. There have been a couple comments that I believe have mischaracterized, perhaps unintentionally, the selection process and, notably, the removal process for the CEP.
There's one elected official who was a member actually of this community. He was not ejected by Edison. In fact, the community, in their own processes, selected somebody different to represent the community.
It would be presumptuous of us or Edison or anybody else to tell this community what to do.
Same is true for the San Diego Board of
-- San Diego County Board of Supervisors. That seat sat vacant and I was really irritated about it. I've written -- I wrote multiple letters and I physically went down to the Board and testified. But that was a choice of that Board. So, that's, I think, a very important part of working with elected officials.
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103 our meetings is intimidating, please help us understand what we can do.
I am, frankly, uneasy that, in this day, we have to have public meetings in ways that have uniformed officers, just like I'm uneasy that I have to walk through a metal detector to go into some schools and so on.
That's life in dealing with public meetings. And, I think it would irresponsible of us, given everything else going on in society to do anything different.
There are two uniformed officers at these meetings. But, please, if there's something that's going on with that that we need to somehow handle better that would be helpful to know.
I will say that one time, a member of the public who's not here tonight did, in fact, rush an NRC official and stood between that member of the public and the NRC official until the uniformed officer came over. So, it has been, in fact, the case that every once in a while, a deterrent is needed and that is how deterrence works.
A fourth very briefly pejorative comments, but I get that there's a lot of -- there's a wide range of views and there are a lot of emotional NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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104 elements. And, Ray Lutz and I will agree to respect each other enormously and to disagree on a lot of things. And, that's the nature of the process here.
I do think it is unhelpful to make comments like the group of CEP members is the most intellectually uncurious people in the state. Or these companies have some authorization to incinerate people and a variety of other comments like that.
We need less kind of Machiavellian, a little more Mr. Rogers in this whole process. And, I think that would really help us help build trust.
And, I think there are a lot of people working on that but there's a small group that is not and I think we need to, frankly, call that out because that's not helpful to the process. And, where we've done -- where we've said inappropriate things, I want to apologize in public because I swore at the end of a really hard meeting and I apologize, again, for, as my seven-year-old -- well, I won't repeat it, but there's a lot of tensions and a lot of stress associated with this. And so, if the folks are saying things that are inflaming people, then we've got to find a way to tone it down.
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105 been up there to testify to them. They invited me up to testify.
That's an independent oversight body. It has a statutory obligation, zoning obligation. It has compensated members, it has a staff. It has a very specific set of mandates around safety including not quite investigative potentials, but an, in essence, investigative potentials. Because that's what they were designed to do.
But engage and advisory roles, as construed in your statute are different. And so, I think it's really important that we keep the mission in mind as we think about what the best practices are. Because there are a lot of best practices that vary by mission.
Sixth, and last comment about answering questions, I am concerned that we continue to hear about topics like the scratching of the canisters, the evacuation zone, the questions around sea level rise, not because we shouldn't keep hearing the questions and keep figuring out how to answer those questions and provide more information, but the claim that those questions have never been addressed or have never been answered is not correct.
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106 better, including the CEP and including the licensee.
But I would urge the NRC, as they engage with the substantive fallout of meetings like this or aftermath or whatever, fallout's probably the word, particularly the wrong word in this context, that is they engage with the substantive follow on for meetings like this that they help the licensees and the local panels that you're working with understand the questions that people think that haven't been answered because you don't know. You've arrived here and then you're going to go to Toledo next or whatever.
And, actually, I think the record of these panels has to be tested against whether, in fact, it's being responsive to these questions. And, I think you will see as you look closely at what we've done, that we have done that in states.
Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
MR. STONE: Once again, I'm Gene Stone for Residents Organized for Safe Environment, and ex-member of the CEP and a member of Mike Blevin's task force.
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107 give that heard is that, first of all, I'll explain it by when I resigned CEP, I wrote a letter to David and the CEP and Edison. And, the people from Diablo Canyon saw that letter and they called me up.
So, the reason that they're going to have some oversight is because I suggested, while Edison has every right to give their information from their point of view, the citizens deserve the right to have real oversight because, and I want this on the record, the reason we are here today is because we have listened to nuclear experts exclusively. And, we can no longer afford that luxury.
We need a vital community participating from an educated point of view. Now, when new members come on the CEP, they should be given a class. They should be educated. They should be brought up to speed. Because it's irritating for the members of the CEP to hear the same question a thousand times.
But it's irritating on the other side to listen to a new member discuss an issue that was talked in the first year and they have no idea about.
So, bringing the people up to speed is imperative, I believe, for going forward in the future.
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108 only made up of nuclear experts. Because, I repeat, we are where we are today because we've listened to nuclear experts.
Thank you very much.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you for those additional comments. So, would anyone else like to speak tonight?
(NO RESPONSE)
MR. KLUKAN: Okay, I'm not -- I'm making sure I'm not missing anybody, stand up is you do.
MS. TORRES: Madge Torres from Citizens Oversight.
I just want to say that I think that the time spent in these meetings should be more equally divided among the community members and the point of views Southern California Edison.
Because we, frankly, don't have a lot of confidence in anything they say anyway and they just waste our time because they lie when it's convenient.
So, and lies of omission are lies.
So, I think it's important that the people in the community are given the respect they are due. And, a bottle of water, while nice, is not respect. The fact that our time is so limited is disrespect.
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109 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
Okay, one more? Okay.
MR. LUTZ: Ray Lutz with Citizens Oversight.
I did miss that one point that training point was a very good one that I did mention -- meant to say, I didn't mention it.
The people there, and David Victor is right, it's proper to have people that are representatives of -- that are elected into those positions to represent their community. And, that's why we have that representation there.
For delivering information to the community, that's fine. But for getting information from the community doesn't work so well. Because the people that actually are well versed in the topic are the people that have been working on for probably decades. And, no more than the people on the panel.
Those are the people out in the audience.
And, this -- the CEP gives the audience very little respect or even really avenues to maybe submit -- yes, you could submit a document and they put onto the serve somewhere. Nothing is ever processed with any kind of openness or discussion that you would see in any regular technical group.
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110 I've been members of many of these. I'm members of the group at MIT. I work with other groups all the time. And, there's a discussion that goes on, back and forth. A discussion. And, these sort of discussions don't take place because of the attitude of the CEP is that basically, you know, the public doesn't know what they're talking about.
They're a bunch of idiots. They come in and they raise hell, scratch --
And the utility has already said that that's fine. They've already explained that over and over and why doesn't the public believe them? Why don't they believe that five-eighths of an inch is okay? Why, you know, and the people that have been pushing on this, Donna Gilmore has been working and working on the canisters.
Now, I don't agree with everything she says, but she's got a point. These canisters were not designed for indefinite storage which is the intention now of what they're going to be doing with them.
There's a big problem in the NRC. So, I've gone to many NRC. The NRC says, oh, well, you can submit a petition to the NRC, and 802 petition or something like that. You can either do for NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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111 Rulemaking or you can do an enforcement petition.
And, they usually waste a lot of time on the phone explaining how I can -- how we can file these petitions and so forth. Take away our time from possible comments.
The NRC, a lot of times, they hold meetings like this one. There's no live streaming.
There's no interaction with the public.
You hold a lot of webinars. A webinar is a little bit better because at least they can maybe be recorded.
Many, many phone calls, not a recording.
I have to record them myself. Somehow jerry-rig it on the phone to get a recording of what took place.
And then, people are very interested because they may not be able to go to those calls. Are those reviewed by the CEP? Never. They never go over what has happened with the NRC. What's going on with these phone calls? Who does all the work to coordinate it?
Donna Gilmore does more work than the CEP ever dreamed of. In other words, in coordinating with the community to be able to take action, to be involved with what the NRC is doing.
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112 facility in Long Beach. Not mentioned at the CEP meeting, that this was taking place. Why? Because the utility didn't want us to know. They didn't want us to know that this was an opportunity to try to block this ridiculous spent fuel storage facility of 3.6 million pounds only a 100 feet from the ocean.
We went up there anyway. I was one of the people that spoke against it. We ended up suing the Coastal Commission and trying to block it.
But the point is, is that all of these meetings that take place about -- talking about, okay, the NRC is having a meeting about the whole tech approval of a shipping container that might be used for this system. Does the CEP mention that to the community to let them know that this NRC meeting is coming up? No, they figured the community is a bunch of idiots. They can't follow that stuff anyway so why should we mention? I guess, otherwise, why don't they have the full list of the NRC meeting?
For that token, why doesn't the NRC contact us about their meetings? Why doesn't the NRC have better openness about these meetings that they're having, these approvals and discussions about these various things? It's still a problem, the NRC not doing that.
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113 Now, if the CEP is our engagement panel, well, they're not engaged with it either. They're not getting the information from the NRC so we know about those meetings. I barely even find out about them. Fortunately, we have Donna Gilmore who follows it with a fine tooth comb and she lets me know when those meetings are.
I'm usually able to, fortunately, participate and follow along. But there's other people in the community that are just as good as I am and better at following this stuff that are engaged in that.
And, I expect the CEP to have an engagement as well in the NRC things. They don't do that because all they do is they're a tool for this utility to provide their point of view. And, to not stir anything up, we don't want you actually get up a head of steam and go up and do anything against what we're planning to do.
We need in this situation the nuclear industry, starting out thinking we're going to have this free power and you know, it was all good intention at the time. They didn't realize that waste was going to be such a big problem.
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114 recognition that this waste is a huge and difficult technical problem. It is not just a political decision, that we said, it was just political. Harry Reid didn't want it, that's the reason we don't have it, and so forth.
No, it's a really hard, technical issue, probably the hardest thing we've ever dealt with.
Humanity is having a hard time.
So, those are my points. We've got to have -- move up the notch. Yes, we had people on the Board that are elected officials. Maybe they're doing their best. We had that seat empty. The guy didn't want to come. I don't care what happened, just say, okay, fine. You don't come, we'll put someone else in there that wants the seat.
There's people in the community that would like to be up there and ask those questions.
They say at the -- that's fine. Does anybody have a question about this? Only the panel gets to ask the question, the community has to sit out there and try to record all of their questions throughout the whole two-hour meeting.
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115 they answer a few questions, but you can't follow up.
It's designed to be belittling to the community.
It's designed to empower Edison and to belittle the community.
This is why it is the wrong model to use.
We've got to get the community to be empowered. We've got to get the CEP to be following what the NRC is doing. Say to the community, look, we know you're interested, here are the meetings coming up with the NRC.
Did the CEP announce this meeting? Maybe they did this one because it's right here. But those phone calls never happen. I don't even know how I can get on the list. Here's I'm somebody that wants and I'm interested to be on the NRC list, there isn't such a thing.
The NRC doesn't care about, again, going with the community. What they want to do is have the Applicants come in and the NRC asks the Applicants questions. They open it up to the community a little bit for questions but just so they can check the box.
You guys are here, you've got to check your box, you've got to file your report. But does anybody going to think about it? Are we going to get past what you're doing right now, your guys are good, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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116 trying to do your job. You've got a checkbox to fill up, done. You went to this community and you're listening. You're going to put it all in a record.
Some people -- some -- is someone going to actually think about and compose this and put it together? That's the big question. Because it's a very hard question what you're trying to deal with, how to have these community panels work. Tricky, but I'll tell you this, don't just follow the model that you see here, you've got to do it a different way.
Thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE)
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
Okay, I think this will be our last speaker for tonight and we'll turn it back over to Bruce to close it out. Thanks.
MR. ALLEN: Ray, thank you for letting me speak about a note I made while you were speaking before. It says, did not listen at the last few CEP meetings.
They explained the canisters. They explained how they drop. They explained that for anyone who would listen, that was explained. And, you said, they didn't explain it.
I went to the NRC website, it's on, you NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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117 know, nrc.gov. It lists meetings for every day of the month. It listed this very meeting. It has probably five or six other meetings at different sites. If you go to the NRC website, you will find what you're looking for.
And, for other people who are interested in what the community engagement panel does, the last subjects, what spent fuel's like. It's available on the songscommunity.com in simple language. So --
MR. LUTZ: You're not understanding my comments.
MR. ALLEN: Well, maybe I didn't but I could find out the information that you seem to be asking on the NRC website and on the community engagement panel website.
MR. LUTZ: They do not have all of that on there.
MR. ALLEN: Well, thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Would you state your name for the record one more time just so we have the transcript right?
MR. ALLEN: My name is George Allen.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
MR. ALLEN: Okay, thank you.
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118 over to Bruce in these few minutes, I just want to thank everyone on behalf of Donna and myself personally in our role as facilitators.
I mentioned, we already told you all, but at the industry letter and I've been protective of time, and you've really respected each other's time with the microphone and letting people speak. So, I just want to, on behalf of Donna and myself, thank you for that. It made our lives a lot easier.
And so, with that, I'll turn it over Bruce to close out the meeting. Thank you, again.
MR. WATSON: Well, I guess the first thing I would have to say, is thank you for coming and providing your comments. We will be putting the report together for the Congress. We'll be taking into consideration everything we hear at all the meetings and compiling hopefully a report that the Congress will be able to use when they come back to their districts to inform people about best practices for citizens or community advisory groups.
I'd just thought I'd summarize a few things I heard tonight. The first one -- point I would make is that the local community is very engage and attends many of the CEP meetings.
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119 be more independent of SCE to the licensee.
CEP membership should be more diverse, maybe with more activists and perhaps with less elected officials.
The CEP, Southern California Edison, and NRC communications could be improved. Websites, newsletters, maybe there should be an annual report.
And they should be better at answering questions.
There was a suggestion that the CEP should be more like the DCISC which is the Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee which is allowed to invite its own experts and do certain things. But they are an entity of the -- from California. I've spoken with them and did some presentations, but they are appointed by I think California Energy Commission. But don't quote on me on that, I'm not really familiar with everything that goes on in California. But they're not -- that's how they become in their job, it's just a panel of three nuclear experts and they're very good at what they do.
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120 groups.
But it appears that there's lots of opportunity for topics on training. Training topics that we could all do.
And so, with that, there's ample opportunity to educate the public a little bit more.
So, with that, I again thank for your attendance. I will point out to you, we do have these little cards which are available which have the
-- our email address which is on this slide. It also has the contact information for providing comments.
And so, with that, the meeting -- oh, as we had in the slide, we will accept comments through November 15th. We will be publishing the Federal Register Notice on that very soon announcing that date, but you have some time to think about things and put your thoughts together. We look forward to getting your answers to the questionnaires and we'll be collecting those and taking those into consideration also as we put together this report.
So, thank you very much, and have a safe trip home.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you, everyone.
(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record at 8:55 p.m.)
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