ML20112F179

Testimony of Prof. David G. Victor, Chairman of the San Onofre Community Engagement Panel

ML20112F179
Person / Time
Issue date:	08/29/2019
From:	Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards
To:
Conway K
References
Download: ML20112F179 (75)

Text

Testimony of Prof. David G. Victor, Chairman of the San Onofre Community Engagement Panel, before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Community Meeting on Section 108 of the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act San Juan Capistrano, CA August 29, 2019 Thank you for holding this meeting in our community, which for the last five years has been grappling with closure and decommissioning of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS). Under the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act (NEIMA) of 2019, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has been charged with gathering information about the establishment and operation of community advisory boards (CABs). Here I share what we have learned from the Community Engagement Panel (CEP), which I chair. My comments today are a reflection on the CEP experience from a chairmans perspective; I have shared a draft of these comments with the CEP and consulted in detail with the CEP leadership (Daniel Stetson, Vice-Chair, and Jerry Kern, Secretary). But the CEP is not a decision-making body and thus formally does not take a position on any matter. I speak today as a private citizen who happens to be Chairman of the CEP, and I reflect on what we have learned since early 2014 when the CEP was created.

In 2013 the SONGS operator, Southern California Edison (SCE) decided to decommission the facility. It also promptly began to set up this panel to open a two-way conduit between SCE (and its co-owners, San Diego Gas and Electric, the City of Anaheim and the City of Riverside) and the communities that would be affected by the decommissioning process. We met for the first time in March 20141 and have met quarterly every year since. Each meeting includes an update from SCE about the decommissioning process and then, in most cases, focuses on a particular topicfor example, monitoring of spent fuel canisters, transportation of spent fuel, environmental impacts of plant decommissioning, etc. In addition to quarterly meetings we also hold workshops on key topics, such as the choice of canisters for on-site storage of spent fuel.

At the time, there was no best practices guidance from NRC. Instead, SCE looked to EPRI2 for best practices and to other community panels, such as the one established at Maine Yankee3. Our Charter is attached as an appendix, along with the current CEP membership roster and a list of the topics covered at each of our meetings.

1 Community Panel to Hold First Meeting March 25 on Nuclear Plant Decommissioning, SCE News Release, March 17, 2014 https://www.songscommunity.com/news/releases/community-panel-to-hold-first-meeting-march-25-on-nuclear-plant-decommissioning 2 Preparing for Decommissioning: The Oyster Creek Experience, EPRI Report, June 2000, pp.

11-3 and 11-4 (copyright protected) www.EPRI.com 3 Main Yankee Decommissioning Advisory Panel - A Model for Public Participation in Nuclear Projects, by the Main Yankee Community Advisory Panel on Decommissioning, Feb. 2005 http://www.maineyankee.com/public/cap%20final.pdf 1

Over the last five years the CEP has provided exactly that function of opening a two-way conduit. It has offered ways for SCE to learn about the concerns of the communities and vice-versa. It squarely meets the definition of a community advisory board (CAB) under Section 108 of NEIMA. However, our Panel is called engagement, not advisory, because the founding philosophy was one of active, two-way engagement between the licensee (SCE) and the communities (plural) affected by the decommissioning process. Our rules for constitution and operation are set forth in the CEP Charter4.

I am confident that as the NRC travels around the country and learns about the wide range of Community Advisory Boards you will learn that one size doesn't fit all. I will focus on what works here locally and also on a few areas where we could do better. My perspective is from San Onofre (and having learned a lot about other communities), with humility that different approaches may be needed in different communities with different licensees.

In my view, there are two keys to understanding most of what happens with the SONGS CEP. First, the local communities are, for the most part, highly aware of the plant, attentive to the decommissioning process, and hold a diverse set of views. I have learned about CABs at other plants that meet only occasionally with sparse attendance. That is not SONGS. Practically nothing of significance happens at SONGS without a wide range of community views and input.

Even topics that are relatively straightforward in the rest of the industrysuch as the merits of moving spent fuel into stainless steel dry storage canistersare contested matters at SONGS.

Second, the licensee is highly engaged and attentive to the need for a two-way dialogue with the affected communities. I have heard of licensees that abhor or are largely indifferent to what they see as community interference in their business; in addition, of course, there are licensees that are selling their plants to third party specialists that take over the entire process of decommissioning. That is not SONGS. High levels of engagement create strong motivations on all sides to talkeven when there isnt agreementbut also creates acute challenges when there are high tensions and disagreements.

Best Practices As I see it, at least five attributes of the SONGS process that help explain how the CEP has been effective. Under Section 108 of NEIMA NRC is charged with identifying best practices, but I hesitate to use that term unequivocally since these attributes are important to us at SONGS and they not apply directly to every other setting.

First, independence. The SONGS CEP is chartered at 18 members, all volunteers.

Second, the membership of the CEP is highly diverse.

_____________________________________________________________________________4 4 SONGS Decommission Community Engagement Panel (CEP) Charter https://www.songscommunity.com/internal_redirect/cms.ipressroom.com.s3.amazonaws.com

/339/files/20195/SONGS_Decommissioning_CEP_Charter.pdf 2

Many of the members are elected officials and they serve on the CEP because of that role they play in their community. (Current membership and affiliations are listed in the appendix.) This approach means that information flows more readily into and out of the affected communities. It also helps ensure that the process stays anchored in what the communitiesas reflected in who they electwant to hear and discuss. Other members of the CEP represent other important perspectives in the communityorganized labor, public interest groups, first responders, Native Americans. Because of the geography of the plant, the membership of the Panel must reflect the reality that SONGS straddles two major counties (Orange County and San Diego County) along with one of the nations most important military bases (Camp Pendleton). (The plant itself is on land owned by the Navy.) We have official representation from both counties and the Camp.

Independence extends to the ability for the Panel to invite and consult its own experts.

(We cant pay them since the CEP doesnt have control over its own budgetmore on that below. Over the last five years I have seen only one instance where a request for expert input was refused because we didnt have the capacity to make a payment. And in that case we found local donations of a few hundred dollars to fix the problem.) At all times there is at least one person on the Panel with technical domain expertisevitally important the Panel sifts through conflicting technical claims and tries to figure out which evidence is realistic. We have also invited the NRC on numerous occasions to join in our Panel discussions, and they have provided vital input.

At most meetings we will invite one or more outside experts so that the conversations stay anchored in technical, regulatory and policy reality. We have had Prof Per Peterson (Berkeley) to talk about spent fuel storage, Prof Neil Driscoll (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) to present the latest research on seismic risks in southern California, Prof Allison Macfarlane (former chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) to discuss spent fuel strategies, senior officials from two major manufacturers of spent fuel canisters, John Kotek (former senior DOE official) to discuss national spent fuel strategy, and the list goes on.

Third, the Panel is created and maintained by SCE, the licensee. I am sure that some members of the public will groan with the prominence I put on this point, and in other communities around the nation different approaches have been takenfor example, CABs created by statute. On an almost daily basis I am reminded that the CEP could not engage if the operator didnt want to be engaged. In other communities if operators are evasive and disinterested in engagement then I would focus on that problem squarely, rather than trying to force engagement by procedurefor example, procedures that establish CABs independently of the operator.

An engagement or advisory panel is not oversight. Theres a lot of oversight already in the industryby NRC, by trustees of trust funds (including the California Public Utilities Commission), by corporate boards, state and local planning authorities, utility regulators, etc.

The river of oversight runs full and, perhaps, periodically overflows its banks. Serious engagementa two-way processis different.

3

As a practical matter, a utility-owned engagement process also radically raises the odds that the CEP gets full and accurate information about whats really happening at the plant including with vendors that provide so many vital services in the industry. (Vendors, for the most part, are not used to the highly intense political environment and don't really understand why respectful, fact-driven engagement is so important. Having SCE as the owner of the CEP helps align the incentives.) Because CEP members are volunteers they don't have the bandwidth to do all the spadework needed for an effective processSCE, with our guidance, does that. Moreover, on essentially every topic that arises in our meetingssuch as seismic risks at the plant, design and operation of dry cask storage systems, and the ecological costs and benefits of actions such as removing ocean conduitsthere is a massive amount of technical information that is, for the most part, not written in plain English. A huge part of what the CEP does is help expose its members and the public to the best technical analysis and translate that information into plain language. We couldn't do that without the licensee at the center.

Fourth, we are not a decision-making body. The NEIMA instructions include requests for information about our rules of order and such. Those can be found in our charter and are not complex mainly because we don't take formal decisions. If we did then meetings and processes would be torqued by the need to build supporting coalitions and the need to wordsmith resolutions in ways that engender support. There are vital roles for those processes in our societies, but the purpose of the CEP is two-way engagementin part to identify places where formal decisions (by whatever relevant party) might be needed, to put a spotlight on topics of importance to the community, and for all sides to learn.

Fifth, the work of the CEP is completely transparent. Every meeting has an agenda that is publicly noticed in advance, with presentation slides circulated in advance. Correspondence is routinely shared with the CEPincluding technical reports. Periodically, it is the sense of the CEP that an important topic needs to be distilled into a white paper or some other note that is written in plain language. (The sense of the CEP emerges from discussions at our meetings and is, as a practical matter, something that the CEP leadership helps to identifywith plenty of opportunity for dissenting or diverging views.) When that happens, SCE (or its contractors) write a draft, share it with the CEP leadership (which usually then also seeks input from others),

and then a report is issued. Anything shared with the CEP is immediately shared with the broader public online at www.SONGScommunity.com. That online site has an opt-in email system so that anyone that wants push notifications of important meetings, activities and documents will get that.

There is live streaming and recording of every meeting.

Over time, we have evolved a process of public comment that I think has worked reasonably well. Questions that arise during public comment (or are submitted in writing, or both) get answered. Some answers are provided the day of the meetingafter public commentand we are expanding the time allowed for that. The rest are answered in writing.

And the full process is documented. That has proved complex and time-consuming, but it is 4

vitally important that people see that if they have real questions they will get answers. At least one hour of every three-hour meeting is devoted to hearing public comment, and that allocation often runs longer than an hour.

Where we can improve The above five are my sense of the most important attributes of the CEP processour best practices. Attributes are not the same thing as delivery, and Ill talk about that shortly.

However, it is also important that we identify places where we think we can do better perhaps much better. I want to flag three.

First, we continue to struggle with how to engage diverse voices from the communities.

Every CEP meeting includes a public comment period, and we invite other correspondence as well. But there is a world of difference between being able to speak for 3 minutes at a meeting and, for example, being a member of the CEP itself. In particular, I note that there are many communities affected by the presence and closure of the plant (and often critical of SCE) that arent formally on our Panel. That includes many voices from the anti-nuclear community and from overlapping communities of public interest groups concerned, rightly, with a wide array of ecological issues and the coastline. Three CEP members hail from those communities (in addition to elected officials, who represent a wide array of interests), but the diversity in the broader community is even wider than that.

A particularly large challenge arises when the diversity of viewpoints on a matterfor example, the integrity of stainless steel canisters, or the real level of seismic risk at the plant isnt supported by the technical literature. In those cases, the CEP has offered a forum (one of many) to hear viewpoints and to marshal technical evidence. On the seismic topic, for example, we dedicated a full meeting to that topic, discussed it at other quarterly meetings, helped organize workshops for local city councils, and also held private technical meetings with members of community groups that held their own views about the geology. As with nearly every visible topic that arises at the CEP, we have also spent a lot of time with local press reporters to raise the odds that news coverage is accurate. In the end, these many different forms of consultation are extremely time consuming and I wonder whether they have had much impact on folks who steadfastly don't believe the science. I don't see how we could do anything different since fact-based deliberation is vitally important to a democracy even when the facts are inconvenient.

Second, I think we still have a long way to go with regard to communicating with the public. The website was revamped a year agoit is now easier to navigate, but hardly a paragon of clarity. There is a tendency in the industry to speak in technical jargon; there is a tendency in the regulated world to speak in terms of administrative law. In a world where there are lots of disagreements, some of our disagreement stems simply from the fact that we are not speaking the same language. I remain deeply disturbed by the number of organized interest groups that are actively pushing misinformationfor example, misinformation about the risks associated with storing spent nuclear fuel in stainless steel canisters. And I am 5

concerned that the chaos created by that misinformation is leading to outcomes that are directly contrary to what is best for our communitiesfor example, the dismantling of the site and moving the spent fuel away from SONGS cant happen unless we have the fuel stored in the safest and best stainless steel canister systems. I don't naively expect that opposed groups will suddenly change their tune, but for the vast majority of the public it is still hard to get reliable, accurate information in plain English about what is happening at SONGS and about the best technical options. That difficulty has created a vacuum that is being filled, in part, by falsehoods. Thats not good for our democratic process and it is not good for the safe, smart management of the SONGS site.

Third, I am concerned about our bandwidth to address happenings at SONGS as they arise. For example, over the last 13 monthssince SCE and its contractors halted fuel transfer operations because they failed to follow best practices, through today when transfers are back under way and public trust has been eroded severelyit has been particularly vital to engage with the public. The CEP members are volunteersthey can only do so much. SCE and its contractors have been in the process of fully revamping its fuel transfer system and dealing with the consequences of poor performance. The number of meetings and activities has skyrocketed. Other important tasksfor example, a workshop long promised to focus on possible worst-case events (and what they mean for the plant)has not happened. SCE and the CEP and the many other members of the affected communities are in the process of regaining their stride, but one thing we have learned along the way is that we need better surge capacityto deal with issues as they mount, which is often hard to predict.

Standards for success What I have described above are attributes of our process that I think are working well and those that need more work. Together, they inform what I hope NRC will see as our best practices. Those practices are like ingredients in baking a cake. They are not the cake.

Whether the communities and SCE continue to invest in the ingredients depend on the quality of the cake. This is where the identification of best practices must clearly distinguish between attributes that can be declared as best practice and things that must be earned through practice.

I see two outcomes from this process that are earned attributesthey cant be ordained or written into best practices.

One is trust. A lot has been said about the need for trust in any process and about the maxims that trust must be earned and it is not the same as agreement. It is the result of processes that are reasonable and fairprocesses that, if folks engage, deliver results. My sense is that trust in an engagement panel like this is highly correlated with trust in the operatorSCE. Although we are independent, our mode of action is at the center of the relations between the operator and the communities. That gives all of us, SCE first and 6

foremost, a strong stake in creating trust. And where trust has frayed, it creates strong incentives to diagnose and fix the problem.

Practically nowhere in the engagement process will you find universal agreement. Even on topics where I expected essentially everyone would agreesuch as on the need to empty the spent fuel pools and put the fuel into widely used stainless steel canisterspeople disagree. But I hope that there is broader agreement that even when outcomes don't command universal consent (which is impossible) that the process has allowed for fair, multiple hearings.

Second, success must be judged by whether the process delivers tangible value to the communities. This is fundamentally why one size fits all wont work for community engagement. The contours of membership, procedures, and roles for the operator will all vary with local circumstancesall for the purpose of delivering value back to the community. The CEP is delivering value as the central forum where any issue regarding the relationship between SCE and the communities on decommissioning can be raised. Often they are raised in the CEP and then settled in other forums. For example, via the CEP many members of the communities have raised the desire for real time radiation monitoring so long as spent fuel is in the community. That desire is now being handled by SCE under mandates with various regulatory agencies, and will be implemented via data sharing agreements still in progress. The CEP can raise and frame these topics; most of them it cant settle.

Some people see the attribute of independence in direct conflict with a licensee-led CAB. I see the opposite because these attributes must be considered in light of our goals. The goal is not some purely independent body comprised of people with no stake in the outcome.

Nor is the goal some pure system of industrial capture in which the firm calls the tune. Rather, the goal is delivering value to the communities affected by decommissioningso that they learn what is happening, they can frame reasonable expectations, and crucially so the licensee can learn and engage seriously with the concerns of the community. Pure independence and pure capture would defeat that goal. My view is that SCE knows that independence is critical to success, and the CEP members know that SCEs central engagement is critical to relevance of the process. This kind of joint product through informed deliberation happens all the time in our democracy, and I doubt anyone on the CEP is surprised by the processit is one reason why such large representation of elected officials is important to our CEP. They are used to balancing intereststo working with the community in all its formson a daily basis.

Lots of other groups hold public meetings and processes. The NRC does this; so do various state regulators. But in all those cases the meetings must follow the agenda and strictures of their sponsors. The CEP is differentit is where the totality of the decommissioning process is on the agenda.

It is worth flagging two lesser known details of this process that are important to consider as other communities craft their own CABs. One is that it is truly impressive how many people will volunteer time and other resources to make this process work. That 7

volunteerism reflects trust and value, I think, but it also reflects two other things. One is that we work in the open; nobody is covered by a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) for purposes of being on the CEP. The other is that many of us, as a condition of joining, required legal backstop from SCE so that we did not face jeopardy as a result of good faith work as a volunteer. In the five years I have been working in this area I have looked at that legal agreement oncewhen a vendor threatened a lawsuit after we accurately raised some questions about their behavior. Counsel was consulted; the vendor calmed down; life moved on. Absent these kinds of assurancesthat our work stays in the open and we don't face undue legal jeopardyI doubt the CEP would be as effective.

There are many other areas where value is still to be delivered. Number one on my list is removal of the spent fuel. Indeed, the one topic has attracted the most attention at our CEP meetings and in the local communities is management of spent fuel. We cant fix this problem without a place to send the fuel, and that requires action at the federal level. Absent federal action, local frustration remains high, as does the supply of clever but unworkable ideas for different ways to store the fuel or other nearby locations to send the fuel. We in the CEP have written letters and consulted widely in Congress. We have written opinion-editorials and testified 5. Yet progress remains elusive. As a nation we need to solve that problem, and so long as solutions are elusive the time horizon and difficulty of the tasks that CABs must handle will grow.

5 Opinion-editorials and testimony:

a. Op-Ed: Nuclear waste has been piling up across America with nowhere to go.

Congress ..., By David G. Victor, Dan Stetson, Jerry Kern, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 24, 2019 https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-victor-stetson-kern-san-onofre-20190124-story.html

b. Op-Ed: Why the wiring of our brains makes it hard to stop climate change, by David Victor, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 17, 2017 https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-victor-amaya-obradovich-why-our-brains-make-it-hard-to-stop-global-warming-20170917-story.html

c. 2019. Testimony of Dan Stetson, Witness, Vice Chair, SONGS Community Engagement Panel, before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform -

Subcommittee on Environment Representative Harley Rouda, Congressional Field Hearing, June 7

d. 2017. Testimony of Prof. David G. Victor, Chairman of the San Onofre Community Engagement Panel, before the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Interior, Energy and Environment 8

Testimony of Prof. David G. Victor, Chairman of the San Onofre Community Engagement Panel, before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Community Meeting on Section 108 of the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act San Juan Capistrano, CA August 29, 2019 APPENDIX

SONGS Decommissioning Community Engagement Panel (CEP)

Charter I. Purpose A. SCE has permanently retired SONGS and is preparing for decommissioning. The SONGS Co-owners recognize the importance of open and transparent dialogue with the local community with respect to decommissioning activities.

B. The SONGS Community Engagement Panel (CEP) is convened by the SONGS Co-owners as a volunteer, non-regulatory body to enhance and foster open communication, public involvement and education on SONGS decommissioning activities. It is intended to serve as a conduit for public information and encourage community involvement and communication with the SONGS Co-owners on matters related to SONGS decommissioning.

C. To foster and encourage an open dialogue of issues of interest to the community, the SONGS Co-owners will provide regular decommissioning updates to the CEP. The CEP serves the interests of area communities and will act as a sounding-board for community feedback to the SONGS Co-owners on decommissioning issues and activities.

D. The CEP will focus on public education and understanding of matters of interest to area communities related to the shutdown and decommissioning of SONGS. The CEP is not intended to be a regulatory body or to substitute for the owners judgment.

Its focus will remain on matters of interest to area communities.

II. Organization and Membership A. Membership

i. The CEP will be comprised of representatives from legislative, business and community groups to broadly reflect the diverse stakeholder viewpoints in proximity to SONGS.

ii. Members should be highly engaged and well-informed leaders in the community who have the network and credibility to serve as resources to their communities regarding SONGS decommissioning.

1

iii. SCE will facilitate the recruiting of CEP members in consultation and with the participation of the SONGS Co-owners and/or working with local entities such as city governments that will appoint a representative.

iv. The CEP will initially consist of 14 to 18 members. Four to six members will be elected officials from local communities and will include, as a minimum, cities and counties within the SONGS 10-mile Emergency Planning Zone, including the Cities of San Clemente, Dana Point, and San Juan Capistrano as well as San Diego and Orange Counties. Members from represented cities will be determined by their respective city councils.

Representatives from the counties will be the elected County Supervisors who represent the supervisorial district that includes or is nearest to San Onofre. An additional 10 to 12 members, representative of the local public and key stakeholders, will be selected by the SONGS Co-owners.

v. Each member of the CEP will serve a two-year renewable term (following the initial staggering of terms). The inaugural panel shall have staggered terms as assigned by the SONGS Co-owners. Membership on the panel shall be renewable at the discretion of the SONGS Co-owners.

vi. CEP members shall commit to sharing educational information on SONGS decommissioning with their own networks of contacts.

Each member may be allowed one designated alternate, as selected by the SONGS Co-owners in consultation with the Chairperson, who shall be allowed to participate in CEP meetings in the absence of the panel member.

The goal is for panel members to participate in all meetings.

vii. Termination of an individual may occur in the event that three (3) consecutive CEP meetings are missed without prior notification to the Chairperson.

viii. Individual membership may be resigned in writing to the CEP Chairperson.

ix. Any vacancy, whether created by the expiration of a members term, termination, or resignation, will be named by the SONGS Co-owners with the review and advice of the CEP and in an effort to maintain representation of a diverse group of stakeholders. As referenced in section II A iii, vacancies with local government entities will be appointed by the relevant government entity.

2

B. Officers

i. The CEP shall have a Chairperson, Vice Chairperson and Secretary. The inaugural Chairperson and Vice Chairperson will each serve a two-year renewable term. The inaugural Chairperson and Vice Chairperson will be appointed by the SONGS Co-owners. Subsequent Chairpersons and Vice Chairpersons will be selected by the SONGS Co-owners with the advice of the CEP.

ii. The Secretary will be appointed by the Chairperson and serve a two-year renewable term at the discretion of the Chairperson.

C. Officer Duties

i. The Chairperson of the CEP shall perform the following duties:

1. Convene quarterly meetings of the CEP and schedule educational workshops, as appropriate.

2. Preside over the CEP and CEP meetings.

3. Appoint the CEP Secretary.

4. Submit to the SONGS Co-owners all recommendations adopted by the CEP.

5. Forward member resignation letters to the SONGS Co-owners.

6. Work with SCE administrative support to ensure the smooth flow of information to the CEP and public.

ii. The Vice Chairperson will perform all the duties of the Chairperson in his/her absence. Additional duties shall include:

1. Support facilitated public dialogue during CEP meetings.

iii. The Secretary shall perform the following duties:

1. Review and approve CEP meeting minutes.

2. Support facilitated public dialogue at CEP meetings.

3

D. Committees

i. Committees, sub-committees, or similar working groups may be designated by the Chairperson as needed to carry out the work of the CEP.

ii. The Chairperson will appoint members to committees established by the CEP.

III. Meetings A. CEP Regular Meetings, shall be held once a quarter and shall be open to the public.

Special meetings may occur more frequently in the discretion of the Chairperson, with the advice of the other members.

B. In an effort to maximize public education efforts, the CEP may also periodically convene public educational workshops where detailed information on specific matters may be discussed with the public.

C. The SONGS Co-owners will arrange for a Regular Meeting venue and will provide a light meal and refreshments for members prior to the meeting.

D. Compensation and Expenses - As volunteers, members shall not be compensated for their time. However, members may be reimbursed by the SONGS Co-owners for expenses incurred in the course of participating in CEP meetings and educational workshops, such as travel and lodging.

E. Participation - To ensure quality input from a variety of community leaders, CEP members will make an effort to ensure that at least half of the members are present at all Regular Meetings.

F. Public Notice - Regular Meetings and Educational Workshops shall be publicly noticed at least 72 hours8.333333e-4 days <br />0.02 hours <br />1.190476e-4 weeks <br />2.7396e-5 months <br /> prior to the scheduled meeting. Public notice shall be provided via the posting of a meeting notice to the www.SONGScommunity.com website.

G. Public Information - Information shared with CEP members shall be considered public information that is appropriate for dissemination to all external audiences.

4

H. Public Comment Period - Regular Meetings shall include a public comment period in accordance with procedures determined in the discretion of the Chairperson. In general, oral comments will be limited to approximately three minutes per person, and the comment period will not exceed approximately one hour, subject to the discretion of the Chairperson I. Meeting Agendas - The SONGS Co-owners shall be responsible for preparing agendas for Regular Meetings in consultation with the Chairperson and such other persons as he or she may designate.

J. Meeting Materials - The Co-owners will endeavor in good faith to provide to the members the meeting agenda, the previous meetings minutes, and any pertinent information requiring review prior to the upcoming meeting at least five calendar days before a scheduled meeting.

K. Administrative Support

i. Ensure that the minutes include a record of members present, a concise and accurate description of matters discussed, and copies of all reports.

ii. Provide electronic versions of the minutes to SCEs public outreach staff for retention and posting on the www.SONGScommunity.com website.

iii. Meeting Minutes - Prepare meeting minutes and consult with the Secretary to confirm accuracy.

iv. Document Retention - Documents shall be maintained in a manner consistent with the SONGS Co-owners Records Retention Policies.

v. Administration and Logistics - SCE staff will handle meeting logistics such as venues and audio/visual requirements. Administrative support will include but not be limited to typing, photocopying, compiling, mailing and/or e-mailing documents, and managing CEP content on the www.SONGScommunity.com website.

L. Additional Input from CEP Members

i. Consultation - In addition to and separate from the quarterly Regular Meetings, the SONGS Co-owners may consult, on an as-needed basis, with CEP members by convening conference calls or face-to-face meetings through which CEP members can serve as a sounding board for decommissioning public outreach.

5

IV. CEP Initial Term A. The continuation of the CEP may be evaluated every two (2) years. Continuation of the CEP shall be determined by the SONGS Co-owners.

V. Charter Amendments A. Amendments to this charter will be adopted by the SONGS Co-owners as necessary.

6

Members of the San Onofre Community Engagement Panel Chairman University of California, San Diego (Dr. David G. Victor)

Vice Chairman The Nicholas Endowment (Dan Stetson)

Secretary City of Oceanside (Representative Jerome M. "Jerry" Kern)

Members American Nuclear Society, San Diego Chapter (Edward "Ted" Quinn)

California State Parks (Rich Haydon)

Camp Pendleton (Sam Jammal)

Capistrano Unified School District Board of Trustees (Board Member Martha McNicholas)

City of Dana Point (Mayor Pro Tem Paul Wyatt)

City of San Clemente (Mayor Pro Tem Dan Bane)

City of San Juan Capistrano (Council Member John Taylor)

Laborers International Union of North America Local 89 (Valentine "Val" Macedo)

Orange County Board of Supervisors (Supervisor Lisa Bartlett)

Orange County Coastkeeper (Garry Brown)

Orange County Sheriff's Department (Donna Boston)

San Diego County Board of Supervisors (Supervisor Jim Desmond)

San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians (Captain Mel Vernon)

Sierra Club (Marni Magda)

South Orange County Economic Coalition (Jim Leach) 1

2019 CEP Meetings Summary 3 Regular Meetings Topic Guest Affiliation Dry Cask Storage: Defense- Doug Bauder Southern California Edison In-Depth (DID) Lou Bosch Jerry Stephenson Fuel Transfer Operations: Tom Palmisano Southern California Edison Status & Path Forward Doug Bauder Jearl Strickland NRC Update Scott Morris Nuclear Regulatory Commission Linda Howell Administrator and Deputy Regional Administrator, Region IV Canister Downloading Tom Palmisano Southern California Edison Event: Lessons Learned and Understanding the Incident NRC Update Scott Morris Nuclear Regulatory Commission Linda Howell Administrator and Deputy Regional Administrator, Region IV 1

2018 CEP Meetings Summary 4 Regular Meetings Topic Guest Affiliation Decommissioning Plan and Tom Palmisano Southern California Edison Fuel Transfer Updates Dry Cask Storage Defense- Tom Palmisano Southern California Edison In-Depth Spent Fuel Transportation Gary Lanthrum Radioactive Material Transportation and Storage Consulting (RAMTASC)

Canister Downloading Event Tom Palmisano Southern California Edison NRC Special Inspection Scott Morris Nuclear Regulatory Commission Deputy Regional Administrator, Region IV 2

2017 CEP Meetings Summary 4 Regular Meetings Topic Guest Affiliation Seismic Dr. Neal Driscoll Scripps Institution of Oceanography Consolidated Interim Pierre Oneid Holtec International Storage (CIS)

John Heaton Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance LLC Aging Management Lisa Edwards Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)

Decommissioning Matt Marston SONGS DS Bruce Watson Nuclear Regulatory Commission Ray Kellar Nuclear Regulatory Commission 3

2016 CEP Meetings Summary 4 Regular Meetings Topic Guest Affiliation California Environmental Cy Oggins California State Lands Quality Act Commission Consolidated Interim Storage Rep. Darrell Issa California 49th Congressional (CIS) District John Kotek Department of Energy Allison Macfarlane NRC Rob Oglesby California Energy Commission Jack Edlow Edlow International Marine Mitigation Steve Schroeter UC Santa Barbara Community Perspective Sara Kaminske IPC & OC Sheriff Emergency Management Dan Dominguez Utility Workers Union of America Charles Langley San Clemente Green 4

2015 CEP Meetings Summary 3 Regular Meetings / 1 Regular (Joint) Meeting Topic Guest Affiliation Nuclear Waste Tim Frazier Bipartisan Policy Center Per Peterson UC Berkeley Geoff Fettus NRDC David Wright So. Carolina Public Service Commission Rob Oglesby California Energy Commission Jim Williams Western Interstate Energy Board Frank Ury Mayor, Mission Viejo Einar Ronningen Rancho Seco Nuclear Generating Sta.

Marni Magda Sierra Club Security Duane White NRC Emergency Planning Sara Kaminske Interjurisdictional Planning Committee Defense in Depth Dr. Kris Singh Holtec Economic Impact Dustin Schrader Beacon Economics 5

2014 CEP Meetings Summary 4 Regular Mtgs / 1 Special Mtg / 2 Workshops Topic Guest Affiliation Spent Fuel Per Peterson UC Berkeley Marvin Resnikoff Radioactive Waste Management Associates Dr. Michael McMahon AREVA Drew Barto NRC Regulatory Fillings Bruce Watson NRC Angela Leiba URS Barry Sims Energy Solutions Emergency Planning Joe Anderson NRC Jeremy Kirchner Interjurisdictional Planning Committee Dry Cask Storage Dr. Michael McMahon AREVA Dr. Kris Singh Holtec 6

Los Angeles Times, January 24, 2019 OPINION Op-Ed: Nuclear waste has been piling up across America with nowhere to go. Congress needs to act Nuclear waste is stored in underground containers at the Idaho National Laboratory near Idaho Falls, Idaho on May 11, 2015.

(Keith Ridler / Associated Press)

By DAVID G. VICTOR, DAN STETSON, JERRY KERN JAN. 24, 2019, 3:05 AM At 74 sites around the country, radioactive waste from the nations commercial nuclear reactors is accumulating with no place to go.

The long-standing problem is becoming a logistical and administrative nightmare.

Financial pressures are forcing many reactors to close. Thousands of canisters packed with highly radioactive fuel remain.

There are closed nuclear reactors in at least 34 states, including Maine, Florida, Pennsylvania and New York. Some are near big cities, such as the San Onofre plantsouth of Los Angeles. The sites are monuments to decades of political neglect and mangled nuclear strategy.

But a solution finally appears to be within reach. Thanks to a growing grass-roots movement and new technology, consensus is building in Washington. A bipartisan coalition in Congress may soon be able to update the countrys antiquated nuclear waste laws.

Any new law should allow communities to compete for investment in so-called interim storage.

At the center of the debate is the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 legislation that was predicated on the idea that our nuclear reactors, which reload with fresh fuel every 18 to 24 months, would send their spent fuel to at least one national permanent repository.

The 1982 law was passed with strong support, because the location of any repository was unknown. A few years later, the country settled on Nevadas Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles from Las Vegas.

Since then, our policy has been hamstrung by opposition in that state, with additional opposition coming from people who object to nuclear power altogether and think, wrongly, that blocking the creation of a permanent storage site would prevent more reactors from being built.

Other countries, including Canada and Finland, have avoided this kind of impasse.

They invited local communities to compete for the investment and jobs that would come with a nuclear waste repository. By the time this better approach became conventional wisdom, American politics around nuclear waste had already been thrust into gridlock by Yucca Mountain.

New legislation could rectify all this, and some proposals are already in the works.

To be effective, any new law should allow communities to compete for investment in so-called interim storage. These new sites would be vast holding zones, most likely located in the desert and far from people, where spent fuel can sit in one location (rather than dozens) and await a permanent home.

Sites in New Mexico and Texas are already seeking licenses, enticed by a combination of industrial backers (who will profit) and local, well-informed civic leaders who want the jobs and investment. These sites are betting that Congress will change the law, and when that reform happens, more sites are likely to emerge.

New legislation should also ensure that shuttered sites like San Onofre are first in line to send away their spent fuel, ahead of reactors that are still operating.

Getting the votes for a new law will take some political engineering. Most Republicans want to open Yucca Mountain. They are motivated by stronger support for nuclear power and the $11 billion already spent to engineer the site. Democrats are more circumspect, with many questioning whether Yucca Mountain can withstand the scrutiny of rigorous licensing.

But a growing alliance across the two parties recognizes that the country cant keep stranding nuclear fuel, especially at reactors that have already closed.

In the last Congress, Republican-written legislation was easily passed in the House.

Of the 109 sponsors, 21 were Democrats. Bipartisan support grew as the bill moved through the House and was amended to include more language on interim storage. In the new Congress, a Democratic-written bill could do the same, but with more safeguards that could make Nevada and the left a bit happier.

Just because it now seems possible to fix the nations nuclear mess doesnt mean Congress will deliver. To get it done, the new House will need to focus on legislating, not grandstanding. The not-so-new Senate will need to get proactive. Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Dianne Feinstein of California have been forging a compromise in the Senate Appropriations Committee, one that includes support for interim storage. But no serious bill has been drafted in the Senate.

New technologies could help. For instance, a technique that would inject spent nuclear waste into the Earths crust known as deep borehole drilling is being tested and may offer alternatives to Yucca.

Regions with closed nuclear plants, including in Southern California, need to keep organizing and pressuring their legislators. The industry and the Decommissioning Plants Coalition, a political lobby also known as the Dead Plant Society, must talk less about the mechanics of closing plants and more about making the politics work.

As 2020 campaigning begins in earnest, new legislation on nuclear waste a topic that has long been a radioactive third rail in American politics could remind us what bipartisanship looks like.

David G. Victor is a professor of international relations at UC San Diego and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Dan Stetson is head of the Nicholas Endowment and president emeritus of the Ocean Institute. Jerry Kern is a former member of the Oceanside City Council. Together they lead the San Onofre Community Engagement Panel, a volunteer group working toward the safe closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook

Los Angeles Times OPINION Op-Ed: Why the wiring of our brains makes it hard to stop climate change Pedestrians walk in a flooded street as Tropical Storm Irma hits Charleston, S.C. on Sept. 11.

(Mic Smith / Associated Press)

By DAVID G. VICTOR, NICK OBRADOVICH AND DILLON AMAYA SEP. 17, 2017, 4 AM Houston has barely begun to dry out from Hurricane Harvey, and Florida faces a massive rebuilding effort after the Irma catastrophe. These two storms, among the most powerful in American history, are typical of the extreme weather events that are

likely to become more common as the planet warms. A third hurricane, Jose, waits offshore and the storm season is far from done.

So why isnt the public heeding scientists and demanding climate action by politicians that could help deal with these destructive extremes? You can point fingers at the influence of fossil fuel companies, at misinformation from climate deniers and at political obstructionism, notably from a fragmented Republican party. But a much deeper force is also at work: the way our brains function.

Humans arent well wired to act on complex statistical risks. We care a lot more about the tangible present than the distant future. Many of us do that to the extreme what behavioral scientists call hyperbolic discounting which makes it particularly hard to grapple with something like climate change, where the biggest dangers are yet to come.

Humans arent wired to act on complex statistical risks very well. We care a lot more about the tangible present than the distant future.

Our mental space is limited and we arent primed to focus on abstruse topics. Except for a small fraction that are highly motivated, most voters know little about the ins and outs of climate change, or the policy options relating to it. Instead, voters opinions about such things derive from heuristics such as political party affiliation and basic ideology.

It isnt surprising, then, that most people dont process information about extreme events the way scientists do. And they dont do a good job of holding politicians accountable when the effects of political inaction are far removed from the policy failures that cause them.

The arrival of extreme events hurricanes, wildfires, drought and torrential deluges is not proof to many people that scientists are right and that a complete rethinking of climate policy is overdue. Instead, voters see these shocks more as evidence that things are out of whack. Change is needed, and voters deliver that verdict not by reevaluating policy but by casting politicians out of office.

Political scientists call such decision-making retrospective voting, and it too is rooted in how the brain deals with complex topics. It seems less than rational, but for busy voters, focusing on immediate, visible results and situations is a practical way to

assess politicians, even if those results and situations are many steps removed from elected leaders actual responsibilities.

When it comes to climate change, this sort of brain-driven behavior tends to create churn in political leadership rather than the continuity needed for long-term planning.

It ejects whoever happens to be in office, rather than the real culprits. It doesnt help that when politicians know they are at risk of losing office due to disasters, they may pursue quick payoffs, neglecting longer-term policies like those needed for emissions mitigation and climate adaptation.

Californias climate actions prove there can be exceptions to these rules. But what matters for global warming is ultimately what happens across the nation and the planet. Overall, the politics of controlling emissions, especially given the time horizons we face, will continue to bring out the worst in how we make important policy decisions.

Quick, deep cuts in emissions would impose high costs on existing well-organized interest groups for benefits that will be diffused across all nations and that will accrue mainly in the distant future. Failing at emissions control, we will have to grapple with the politics of adaptation abandoning vulnerable regions and subsidizing the construction of various forms of protection, like sea walls to deal with worsening storm surges.

Voters consistently report being worried about climate change. But asked to rank their priorities, they rarely put climate policy high on the list. Nor does the public indicate that it is willing to spend what is needed to address the problem. What voters know is mixed, muddled and sparse.

This grim analysis explains why political systems will always be playing catch-up.

Even with the conspicuous signals of regular extreme events, public support for the policies needed to stop global warming will be fleeting. But that realization can also inspire new policy strategies that are better wired for our political brains.

First, investments in technology can help immensely because they lower the cost of reducing emissions, making change appear less costly and easier to adopt. New energy technologies also create new interest groups that can help keep policy makers focused on controlling emissions when voters minds drift.

Second, were likely to do better with policies that generate immediate and tangible benefits. A good example is efforts to control soot a potent warming pollutant and also a central ingredient in noxious local air pollution. Even countries and societies that care little about global goals find it in their self-interest to protect the air their citizens breathe.

Third, our political institutions can help people focus on the long view by surveying climate impacts on a regular basis, so that each extreme storm is less a novel event and more a part of a pattern that needs sustained policy attention. One model is Californias program of localized climate assessments that inform decisions about land-use planning and development. Another is the Obama administrations regular, nationwide assessments, which are at risk of termination under President Trump.

Our brains are unfortunately not wired to tackle problems like climate change. With some help we can build policies that enable us to do better. What the storms in the Gulf and Atlantic are reminding the public for now, if not for long is that the consequences of failure are big.

David G. Victor is a professor at UC San Diegos School of Global Policy & Strategy and codirector of the Initiative on Energy and Climate at the Brookings Institution.

Nick Obradovich is a research scientist at MITs Media Laboratory. Dillon J. Amaya is a PhD student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook

Congressional Field Hearing - June 7, 2019 House Committee on Oversight and Reform - Subcommittee on Environment Representative Harley Rouda, Chairman Dan Stetson, Witness Vice Chair, SONGS Community Engagement Panel Introduction Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear and testify at todays hearing. My name is Dan Stetson1 and I serve as Vice Chairman of the Community Engagement Panel or CEP for the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, or SONGS for short.

CEP History I was invited here today to serve as a representative of the SONGS CEP. The CEP was formed early 2014 after the retirement of SONGS in 2013. The purpose of the CEP is to serve as a bridge and conduit between SCE and the local communities.

The 18 members2 of the CEP represent a range of stakeholders, from environmental NGOs and Native American Tribes to business and organized labor.

More than half are local elected officials - from Oceanside to Dana Point - sworn to represent best interests of their constituents. All are volunteers.

There are three officers including Chairman Dr. David Victor of UCSD myself, Dan Stetson, Vice Chairman and Jerry Kern, immediate past city council member from Oceanside. Officers provide input to SCE on agenda topics and public engagement.

We hold quarterly meetings and periodic workshops. All are open to the public for transparency. Meetings are webcast live and video recordings are posted online.3 We provide one full hour for public comment.

1 See appendix for resume 2

List of CEP members is available at https://www.songscommunity.com/community-engagement/community-engagement-panel 3

Past CEP meetings may be viewed at https://www.songscommunity.com/community-engagement/meetings 1

Whats Important?

Over the past 5-plus years, the CEP has addressed a variety of issues that are important to the local communities.

But I have learned that there really are just a couple of truly important issues. The first is safety managing the spent fuel while it is on site and the second is removing the spent fuel from the site.

Dry Cask Storage Canisters Let me first address on-site storage and, more specifically, dry cask storage. This is what we on the CEP have come to call defense-in-depth for dry cask storage.

Defense in depth means looking at the full complement of means to support safe on-site storage of spent fuel.

This starts with design and fabrication of the spent fuel canisters, while also considering operations, maintenance and security, as well as canister inspections, andif neededremediation of a compromised canister.

Dry cask storage has been addressed frequently at CEP meetings in the past 5-plus years. I am proud to say I am among those on the SONGS CEP who have advocated with SCE to help shape the utilitys approach to spent fuel management. Edison has taken concrete steps to address areas of interest. One such step is laser peening the welds on the new canisters to minimize the risk of chloride-induced stress corrosion cracking of the canister shells.

Offsite Storage and/or Disposal The second important issue is moving the spent fuel offsite. Over the years, most but not all members of local communities also have expressed an interest in moving the spent fuel offsite from San Onofre to a federally licensed storage or disposal facility. Offsite storage has been addressed frequently at CEP meetings over time.

Just consider the costs. As the schedule for the Department of Energy to pick up spent fuel continues to slip, the 2018 Audit Report of the Office of the Inspector 2

General4 estimates that slippage costs to American tax payers of over 35 billion dollars, or approximately 2.2 million dollars per day.

To address offsite storage, Chairman David Victor delivered testimony5 the fall of 2017 before the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Interior, Energy & Environment. David, Jerry, and I are among those CEP members who have met with members of the California Congressional delegation to advance federal legislation for spent fuel. In April, I met with 5 members of Congress and/or their staff, including staff from Representative Roudas office.

Congressional outreach is part of a broader effort to try to effect changes to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and enable consolidated interim storage and permanent disposal.

I appreciate the request by Representative Rouda and others for 25 million dollars in the Energy & Water Appropriations bill to help fund CIS, transportation, and infrastructure.

On behalf of the SONGS Community Engagement Panel, let me close by saying thank you for making this a top priority. We look forward to additional action in Congress to get spent fuel at San Onofre off site.

With the passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, Congress made a solemn promise to the American people. To date that promise remains unfulfilled. We are counting on you to keep this promise and solve this seemingly intractable problem once and for all.

Thank you for your attention.

4 See appendix for the Audit Report and supporting material 5

See appendix for testimony 3

APPENDIX 4

Daniel T. Stetson Dan has never had a job East of Pacific Coast Highway. He is currently the Executive Director and a Trustee of The Nicholas Endowment. The Endowment was created by Broadcom co-founder Dr.

Henry Nicholas III and his wife Stacey Nicholas to provide meaningful support to charitable organizations in the advancement of science, education and the arts.

Dan also serves as vice chairman of the Community Engagement Panel (CEP) established in February 2014 to encourage open communication, public involvement and education throughout the decommissioning of San Onofre nuclear plant. The CEP was established by current and former owners of San Onofre responsible for decommissioning: Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas

& Electric, and the cities of Riverside and Anaheim.

Dan served as President and CEO of the Ocean Institute from 2005-2015, after having joined the Institute in 1992. The Ocean Institute is an educational non-profit organization located in Dana Point, California that provides inspiring marine science and maritime history programs for over 100,000 students annually. Under Dans leadership, the programs became nationally renowned and received the inaugural Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Maritime Education.

Immediately prior to his tenure at the Ocean Institute, Dan consulted for the law firm of Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro representing a foreign shipping company involved in an oil spill incident. Dan managed the compensation process for over 2,000 claimants from the largest oil spill in the LA Harbors history. While the spill was originally attributed to his clients cargo ship, Dans efforts led to the discovery of evidence that the majority of the spill (93%) was actually from a previously unidentified ship. Dan testified as an expert witness in criminal court. In the resulting civil trial, 100%

of the client's multimillion dollar clean up and claims expenses were recovered.

Dan has a BA from UC Santa Barbara and an MBA from California State University, Fullerton. He is a veteran of the US Coast Guard. Together with Roxanne, his wife of 33 years, Dan enjoys hiking, tennis, and diving.

OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL U.S. Department of Energy AUDIT REPORT DOE-OIG-19-08 November 2018

Department of Energy Washington, DC 20585 November 27, 2018 MEMORANDUM FOR THE DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF STANDARD CONTRACT MANAGEMENT FROM: Sarah B. Nelson Assistant Inspector General for Audits and Administration Office of Inspector General

SUBJECT:

INFORMATION: Audit Report on the Department of Energy Nuclear Waste Funds Fiscal Year 2018 Financial Statement Audit The attached report presents the results of the independent certified public accountants audit of the balance sheets of the Department of Energy Nuclear Waste Fund, as of September 30, 2018, and 2017, and the related statements of net cost, changes in net position, and statements of budgetary resources for the years then ended.

To fulfill Office of Inspector General audit responsibilities, we contracted with the independent public accounting firm of KPMG LLP to conduct the audit, subject to our review. KPMG LLP is responsible for expressing an opinion on the Nuclear Waste Funds financial statements and reporting on applicable internal controls and compliance with laws and regulations. The Office of Inspector General monitored audit progress and reviewed the audit report and related documentation. This review disclosed no instances where KPMG LLP did not comply, in all material respects, with generally accepted Government auditing standards. The Office of Inspector General did not express an independent opinion on the Nuclear Waste Funds financial statements.

KPMG LLP concluded that the combined financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the respective financial position of the Nuclear Waste Fund as of September 30, 2018, and 2017, and its net costs, changes in net position, and budgetary resources for the years then ended, in conformity with United States generally accepted accounting principles.

As part of this review, auditors also considered the Nuclear Waste Funds internal controls over financial reporting and tested for compliance with certain provisions of laws, regulations, contracts, and grant agreements that could have a direct and material effect on the determination of financial statement amounts. The results of the auditors review disclosed no instances of noncompliance or other matters required to be reported under generally accepted Government Auditing Standards or applicable Office of Management and Budget guidance.

Attachment cc: Chief Financial Officer, CF-1 Director, Office of Finance and Accounting, CF-10 Deputy Director, Office of Finance and Accounting, CF-10 Assistant Director, Office of Financial Policy and Internal Controls, CF-12 Division Director, Office of Financial Policy and Internal Controls, CF-12 Audit Resolution Specialist, Office of Financial Policy and Internal Controls, CF-12 Audit Report: DOE-OIG-19-08 2

Attachment INDEPENDENT AUDITORS REPORT 3

Attachment 4

Attachment 5

Attachment 6

Attachment 7

Attachment 8

Attachment 9

Attachment 10

Attachment 11

Attachment 12

Attachment 13

Attachment 14

Attachment 15

Attachment 16

Attachment 17

Attachment 18

Attachment 19

Attachment 20

Attachment 21

Attachment 22

Attachment 23

Attachment 24

Attachment 25

Attachment 26

Attachment 27

Attachment 28

Attachment 29

FEEDBACK The Office of Inspector General has a continuing interest in improving the usefulness of its products. We aim to make our reports as responsive as possible and ask you to consider sharing your thoughts with us.

Please send your comments, suggestions, and feedback to OIG.Reports@hq.doe.gov and include your name, contact information, and the report number. You may also mail comments to us:

Office of Inspector General (IG-12)

Department of Energy Washington, DC 20585 If you want to discuss this report or your comments with a member of the Office of Inspector General staff, please contact our office at (202) 586-7406.

Estimated Taxpayer Liability Exceeds $35 Billion Date of Audit Amount Paid from DOEs Estimate* of Liability Report Taxpayer Funded Including Amount Paid Judgment Fund 9/30/2018 $ 7.4 Billion $ 35.5 Billion 9/30/2017 $ 6.9 Billion $ 34.1 Billion 9/30/2016 $ 6.1 Billion $ 30.8 Billion 9/30/2015 $ 5.3 Billion $ 29.0 Billion 9/30/2014 $ 4.5 Billion $ 27.1 Billion 9/30/2013 $ 3.7 Billion $ 25.1 Billion 9/30/2012 $ 2.6 Billion $ 22.3 Billion 9/30/2011 $ 1.6 Billion $ 20.7 Billion

• Over time, these estimates have been based on varying assumptions as to when DOE would begin removing fuel from reactor sites, ranging from 2021 in the 9/30/2013 estimate to 2029 in the 9/30/2018 estimates. Any further slippage in the schedule will cause actual liabilities to be higher than estimated.

Source: DOE Annual Nuclear Waste Fund Audit Reports 2

Testimony of Prof. David G. Victor, Chairman of the San Onofre Community Engagement Panel, before the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Interior, Energy and Environment September 26, 2017 Subcommittee Chairman Farenthold, Ranking Member Plaskett, and members of the subcommittee, including Representative Issa and Representative Gomez, thank you for the invitation to testify today about the national problem of storage and disposal of spent nuclear fuel. About 35 years ago Congress laid out a plan for long-term disposal of spent fuel from the countrys nuclear reactors: the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) of 1982. Since passage of that law, the government has consistently failed to meet key deadlines to remove spent fuel from the 99 operating commercial reactors at 59 sites around the country.1 Worse, there are now 17 reactors at 14 sites in 11 states that are no longer operatingreactors, such as at San Onofre in Southern California where the spent fuel will remain stuck onsite long after the rest of the site has been shut down and removed.2 The Department of Energy has collected upwards of $750 million annually from customers into a fund that amassed $46 billion dollars by late 2016, the most recent audit.3 These funds were intended to defray the cost of removal and long-term disposal of spent fuel.

Instead, the funds sit essentially idle. A series of lawsuits has halted those payments for many utilities, and some utilities are now being paid damages from taxpayer funds to recover the cost of continued storage of their spent fuel beyond the time when it was supposed to be accepted by the government.

For many years, this persistent failure to perform was, outside the nuclear utility industry, largely unnoticed. Nearly all reactors that were built kept operating. Unable to ship spent fuel to a permanent repository they left it on sitein pools and in dry cask storage.

The situation today is completely different. While most of the US nuclear fleet continues to operate, a growing number of reactors are in the midst of decommissioning. For these sites, the inability to remove spent fuel is particularly deplorable. Local communities have seen most of the jobs associated with these reactors, along with many other benefits, disappear. They are watching massive deconstruction projects remove reactors domes, buildings and other facilities. Yet they are still left with the spent nuclear fuel onsite, without a proper home and without any indications as to when it will eventually be removed. Some 1

Kim Cawley, Testimony: The Federal Governments Responsibilities and Liabilities Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, Before the Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy, Committee on Energy and Commerce, U.S. House of Representatives (3 December 2015).

2 For detail see generally NUREG 1350. https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1350/

3 Office of the Inspector General, DOE, Audit Report, OAI-FS-17-04 (December 2016).

1

solutions to this problem are coming into focus, but they require changes to federal law as well as new investments where Congress and the Administration must work together.

I testify today as Chairman of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS)

Community Engagement Panel (CEP). SONGS Units 2 and 3 are the largest commercial reactors slated for decommissioning in the country, and the political environment around the plant is more intense than almost anywhere in the country. I serve in that role as a volunteer. I am also a Professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) at UC San Diego where I am also an adjunct professor in Climate, Atmospheric Sciences and Physical Oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Back in 2013 when the operator of the plant, Southern California Edison (SCE) decided to decommission the facility it also set up this panel to open a two-way conduit between SCE (and its co-owners, San Diego Gas and Electric, the City of Anaheim and the City of Riverside) and the communities that would be affected by the decommissioning process. Over the last three years the CEP has provided exactly that function. It has offered ways for SCE to learn about the concerns of the communitiesfor example; the impact of shrinking the SONGS emergency planning systems, now that the plant poses a lower hazard to the community, on the budgets of first responders, hospitals and other essential public services. It also offers a way for SCE to help inform the communities about how decommissioning will unfold; the economic and environmental impacts, and the various strategies being adopted to mitigate adverse impacts. We meet quarterly and have 17 members (with one vacancy)all volunteers, drawn from the local communities and a blend of public officials, representatives from environmental NGOs, business, labor, and other stakeholders. We are not a formal decision-making body nor do we have official oversight functionsthere are plenty of other bodies with those powers and responsibilities.4 I speak today as a private citizen who happens to be Chairman of the CEP, and I reflect on what we have learned over the three years of CEP operation.

Without a doubt, one topic has attracted the most attention at our CEP meetings and in the local communities: spent fuel. As in any community, there are many different views about a technology like nuclear power. With the closure of SONGS, I thought, that many of those diverging viewpoints would become moot and the communities could come together and focus on the best plan for decommissioning. Instead, many people have been shocked to learn that decommissioning of the plant does not mean removal of everythingthe spent fuel remains because there is no place to send it. By not offering a practical place and method to ship spent fuel the Federal government has, through inaction, created a whole new array of acrimonious debates and controversy within local communities about how best to steward the spent fuel. I have observed and been in the middle of those debates for three years and the rest of my testimony outlines what I have seen and learned.

4 For more, including documents and video from every meeting, see www.songscommunity.com 2

The importance of moving the fuel out of local communities at decommissioned sites.

First, I cant emphasize enough the importance of offering practical ways for decommissioned sites to move spent fuel out of their communities to other, more appropriate locations. Offering a practical route to that outcome would be enormously valuable to our communities. That route could involve finishing Yucca Mountain and allowing consolidated interim storage (CIS), also known as interim storage facilities (ISF), and Ill talk about that next.

But people are most looking for is a viable plan that addresses an urgent problema problem that is not so pressing in communities with operating reactors but is vitally important to those where reactors are undergoing decommissioning and will have stranded spent nuclear fuel left with reduced security at the decommissioning site.

We are particularly concerned that the current arrangements at the Department of Energy (DOE) are opaque about which spent fuels will ship first. This problem has not been important to solve over the last few decades because there was no place to ship. Today that might be different and I would urge Congress to help DOE develop a more coherent set of priorities. The current standard contract for fuel shipments, while ambiguous, suggests that the oldest fuel will ship first. That approach will create an inefficient and incoherent shipment patternwith canisters moved across a patchwork of sites, and no site happy with the outcome. We should put the decommissioned sites first because those sites are no longer generating spent fuel, in most cases are removing reactors and support buildings, and gain much smaller economic benefit from hosting these facilities. By contrast, sites with operating reactors will always have spent fuel in their reactor cores, fuel pools and dry cask pads. For all these communities, it is important to have a viable long-term plan for spent fuel removal; for decommissioned sites the imperative is particularly compelling.

Political Realism We in the San Onofre communities have learned that the politics of finding solutions to this problem are difficult. For years, Yucca Mountain has been a political lightning rod in ways that have made it exceptionally difficultat times, impossibleto move forward with that site.

The prospect of Consolidated Interim Storage might prove politically more tractable because, when combined with consent-based siting, it allows communities to nominate themselves to become storage sites. Following the guidance of the bipartisan Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC) report, we are encouraged that a process of informed consent has emerged and led to two communities volunteering themselves for CIS facilities. Today, my sense is that one of those sites is viable and that it enjoys healthy support from much of the local communities. The other site is owned by a company that paused its licensing process due to a planned acquisition which most likely will leave their CIS operations by the wayside. The viable site is in New Mexico where the governor of New Mexico has given approval for this CIS facility. The local entity that owns the land Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance (ELEA) wants the facility that is set to monitor at least 10,000 dry storage canisters in partnership with Holtec International. The ELEA is composed of 3

cities of Carlsbad and Hobbs and the counties of Eddy and Lea. The community purchased the 1000 acres and has strong local support for the CIS facility. This is the model we must continue to pursue of the government working with communities to find volunteers who want to help deal with the national crisis of stranded spent nuclear fuel around the country. Earlier this year we hosted officials from ELEA at a CEP meeting, and I was impressed by the level of planning and awareness.

In the densely populated communities around San Onofre, our interest is to advance any responsible program that moves the spent fuel out of our neighborhoods as quickly as possible. For us, that means Yucca and CIS simultaneously. Over the last three years, we have learned three important things about how to pursue this goal.

First, the nation does not benefit from monopolies. To some degree, the problems at Yucca Mountain are the result of the country having just one option. As that option has faltered the whole nations industry, along with communities around nuclear power plants, have suffered. The original plan, way back when the NWPA was signed into law, was to have two sites. Expedience in public sector spending and noxious politics whittled that roster down to one, and that outcome has been harmful. I am very concerned that the same will happen with CIS. Overall, the nation and the communities that are hosting spent nuclear fuel would benefit from having many options.

Second, and equally important, it is crucial that CIS be viewed as a complement to Yucca Mountain (and to other means of permanent spent fuel disposalfor example, deep borehole technology). I appreciate that over the last year that much of the newfound enthusiasm for acting on spent fuel is rooted in a desire to restart Yucca Mountain. But any realistic scenario for Yucca must deal with the reality that Yucca is still a long time coming. The site is not operational. Once operational, fuel will need repackaging so that casks with large numbers of fuel assemblies are put into smaller units with fewer assemblies and lower heat loads. All that will take time.

For the communities around San Onofre, those realistic delays in starting Yucca create the imperative for CIS. We want the spent fuel moved. For the nation as a whole, those delays offer an important logic for CIS: safety and saving money. It is much wiser to store spent fuel at a small number of large sites, far from population centers, than dozens of sites scattered around the country. Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have estimated the cost savings from a robust CIS program and found that we could avoid $15-30b in expenditure in light of expected delays in reopening Yucca Mountain.5 Fiscal prudence demands that CIS be part of the overall strategy.

5 For an overview see J. Jarrell Does Consolidated Interim Storage Make Sense in an Integrated Waste Management System? Oak Ridge National Laboratory, NEI Used Fuel Management Conference, May 2017, Savannah, GA. Numbers here are undiscounted. For discounting and sensitivity analysis see: Cost Sensitivity Analysis for Consolidated Interim Storage of Spent Fuel:

Evaluating the Effect of Economic Environment Parameters (Cumberland et al., FCRD-NFST-4

Third, the political coalitions around nuclear power are in flux when it comes to spent fuel. There is a well-known debate about the role of nuclear power in the nations future energy mix, and active industry efforts to improve performance to keep as many of the existing fleet operational. There are also well-known battle lines drawn for and against nuclear power.

What has impressed me about spent fuel is that those battle lines have shifted. Many groups that have been skeptical or outright against operational nuclear plantssuch as the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Union of Concerned Scientistsare aligned in favor of finding smart strategies for storing spent fuel, including CIS. It is really important that the larger, heated and probably irreconcilable differences about operational reactors not cloud the fact that many more communities are coming together to find solutions to storing spent fuel.

For Congress, these three lessons suggest that the current effortsfar advanced in the House and still developing in the Senateto amend the NWPA are profoundly important. As those efforts proceed it is important that the Yucca mission, which has attracted more attention and political energy, not leave CIS aside.

Toward a Long-term Strategy: the Roles of Stewardship and Transportation Compared with three years ago, there has been striking progress, especially in the House, toward new legislation that would address many of the obstacles to restarting Yucca and also authorizing a new program of consolidated storage. While that is admirable, we also need to grapple with the consequences of a long delay in arriving at this point. It is also crucial to grapple with the fact that most people outside Washington are skeptical that Washington can organize and motivate itself to make practical changes in law and back those with reasonable appropriations. What I have seen in the local communities around San Onofre is concern that Washington is so broken that reasonable bipartisan legislation, such as smart amendments to the NWPA, cant survive the legislative process.

This skepticism has three practical implications. First, while there are some actions that DOE or NRC can do to advance consolidated storage and promote smart stewardship of the nations spent nuclear fuel, the most important actions require a change in federal law. Getting House (HR 3053) and Senate versions into conference is essential, lest Congress itself be seen as a central obstacle to progress in what has been, so far, largely an Executive Branch failure to deliver on promises made to the American peopleespecially the people living within the foot prints of nuclear reactors. I have testified at the NRC about their efforts to streamline the regulatory process, which are admirable.6 But the reality is that the NRC is already doing what 2016-000721, Rev. 1 ORNL/SR-2016/681) Available at https://curie.ornl.gov/content/cost-sensitivity-analysis-consolidated-interim-storage-spent-fuel-evaluating-effect-economic 6

2014. David G. Victor. Decommissioning at San Onofre: The Community Engagement Experience. Testimony to the Nuclear Regulatory Committee. For more information see 5

it can; even without streamlining of the regulatory process for decommissioned sites those sites are finding ways to cope with NRC procedures through exemptions. What everyone is waiting for is enabling federal law.

Second, because of these delaysand skepticism about when they will be resolved the nations nuclear sites are now gearing up to monitor and manage spent nuclear fuel casks in ways that were never intended. The original plan was that spent fuel would be removed from reactor cores, cooled in pools onsite, and then put into canisters and casks for brief local storage and expeditious removal. Because that last step in the chain has never happened, the canisters and cask systems are now aging in place. At the urging of the CEP, SCE has developed an extensive program for monitoring the casks and inspecting the canisters while they are on site.7 Recent legal challenges and settlements have reinforced that effort.8 We are fortunate in that other sites built dry cask systems before SONGS and we can learn from their aging management programs. To give you a sense of just how long the delays have extended, as of today several sites have seen the original 20 year NRC license for on-site dry cask storage run its course, with each getting a 40-year renewal. At the most recent CEP meeting we devoted the entire session to this topic.9 Third is transportation. There is an understandable tendency in Washington to do what can be done. This tendency has generated legislation that focuses on Yucca Mountain and brings CIS along. But we must focus, now, on the reality that all of these strategies will not work unless there are viable ways to move spent fuel from reactor sites to CIS and/or permanent repositories. The US Navy safely ships defense spent nuclear fuel and related materials around the country on a regular basisthousands of shipmentsusing an effective and credible government planning system and emergency training for its routes. This system must be available to the DOE as it takes authority over spent nuclear fuel transportation. The NRC has procedures ready for use in this area (NUREG 0725). Safe transportation of spent commercial reactor fuel is not a technical problem, but it is one that needs careful administrative planning and political awareness.

A serious transportation plan would have several elements:

• A program for testing and building railroad cars for moving spent fuel casks. This is a DOE responsibility, and with current appropriations DOE will test a prototype rail car (along with other support cars) over the next 2 years. Thats good news, but there are https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/commission/slides/2014/20140715/victor-20140715.pdf 7

2014. David G. Victor. Safety of long-term storage of spent nuclear fuels at SONGS. Report of the Chairman of the Community Engagement Panel of the SONGS. For more information see https://www.songscommunity.com/docs/LongTermStorageofSpentFuel_120914.pdf 8

2017. Citizens Oversight, Inc. V. Southern California Edison. For more information see https://www.songscommunity.com/doc_library_settlement.asp 9

2017. 3Q Meeting of the Community Engagement Panel. Oceanside, California. For more information see http://www.songscommunity.com/091417CEPMeetingAgenda.pdf 6

no appropriations to build a fleet of these cars as will be needed to move spent fuel expeditiously. Elsewhere I have outlined the state of play and costs, which are small. 10

• The states and regions must get ready. When DOE was planning to move waste from the nuclear weapons sitessuch as in Colorado and Washingtonstate and regional officials got organized to help plan routes, safety and procedures. The states where these sites were shipping nuclear materials had an incentive to make this work because they wanted the sites cleaned up. By contrast, very little to none of the necessary spadework for local, state and regional planning of spent fuel shipments has been done.

There is legislation in California that would help.11 The CEP has reached out to the California Energy Commission on this topic.12 And the Western Governors Association could easily be tappedas could regional state associations in other parts of the country. The problem is that nobody has believed that serious solutions for spent nuclear fuel would be forthcoming. Now that they are, the transportation planning processes must gear upwith a key role for the Federal government.

All the authority needed to fix this problem does not rest with Congress but many are looking to Congress for leadership and initiative in getting the process started. A good start would be to ensure that a title on transportation is included in NWPA Amendments (inserted, presumably, in Conference), appropriations to build the needed railcar system are included in a timely way (probably starting next fiscal year), and the states are encouraged if not mandated to get organized. Under plausible yet optimistic scenarios, CIS facilities could be open in the early 2020s. Spent fuel at SONGS (and many other sites) would be ready for shipment then. It would be a pity if all the work done to open storage and permanent disposal facilities falters for lack of attention to transportation.

Final Words In a large and diverse nation such as ours, there always seems to be a more pressing and urgent matter that captures political attention. Meanwhile, critical questions about the nuclear industry and its infrastructure remain unanswered for decades while leaving un-spent billions of dollars. Inaction has pushing these questions to future generations to answer.

These delays only succeed in creating distrust in the ability of government to find a workable solution, anger towards the plant operators and creates an impossible future for those communities that involuntarily host these sites. All we ask is that those who can act and make a difference, do so with all possible urgency.

10 David Victor, Tim Brown and Dan Stetson, Participants in 12 June telephone call with DOE to discuss transportation of spent nuclear fuel, 26 June 2017, see www.songscommunity.com 11 2017. Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2017. For more information see https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/3053 12 Letter from David Victor, Tim Brown and Dan Stetson to Robert Weisenmiller, Chairman of the California Energy Commission, 12 December 2016. see www.songscommunity.com 7

A plan for smart removal of spent nuclear fuel from the nations commercial reactors is now coming into focus. It will require new legislation and a new focus by the federal government, as well as the states and regional planning authorities.

I see three steps as essential. First, the political deal must be done that allows for consolidated interim storage, and that deal as far as I can tell centrally requires restarting the Yucca Mountain process. Yucca and CIS should be seen as complements to each other.

Politically they are combined; economically and technically they are also combined because interim storage allows for a more rational long-term strategy that includes opening a permanent storage facility. Second, a fresh look at the priorities for removing spent fuel is needed. When options for sending the fuel become viable there will be much more fuel ready to move than the system can handle. We think decommissioned sites should be high in the queue. Third, a viable strategy for transportation is neededa topic that has been orphaned by the lack of suitable places to send the fuel. Transportation requires some funds (small, mainly for rail cars and planning) and crucially that federal, state and other officials begin working together on strategies.

8