San Onofre might be miles away from Huntington Beach, but surfer Don Ramsey knows if something goes wrong at the site where 3.6 million pounds of nuclear waste is planned to buried it’s going to be a widespread problem for all of Southern California.

“You’re going to have Fukushima happening in South County,” Ramsey said, referring to a 2011 nuclear accident in Japan that was triggered by a tsunami. “It will devastate Huntington Beach. It will ruin everything. … This cannot happen.”

With the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station as a backdrop Huy Pham of San Juan Capistrano walks south along the beach at San Onofre State Beach early Friday morning after it was announced that the nuclear plant will be closing permanently. When asked what he thought of the plant closing, Pham replied,”That’s awesome. I glad to hear that.” /// ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: 06/07/13 – Mark Rightmire, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

There are 90 spent fuel pools at more than 70 reactors scattered across the nation. In California, millions of pounds of waste have been cooling at the San Onofre and Diablo Canyon nuclear plant sites for years. San Onofre is at less risk than other sites, officials said, because it has not produced new waste since its reactors ceased operating in 2012. But if water drains from the pools, fire remains a real threat, the researchers said.

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This Google Earth image shows how close the expanded dry storage area for spent nuclear waste will be to the shoreline at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. (Image courtesy of Google Earth)

Gary Headrick, founder of San Clemente Green, addresses a group that gathered outside Tuesday’s May 2 San Clemente City Council meeting, calling for the city to oppose the Coastal Commission’s approval of burial of nuclear waste at San Onofre.

People walk on the sand near the shuttered San Onofre nuclear power plant. AP FILE PHOTO



The decommissioned San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Clemente, California, on Wednesday, April 5, 2017. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

A protester in Laguna Beach last weekend showed up in a yellow hazmat suit with matching surfboard to take a stand against nuclear waste burial at San Onofre. Photo courtesy of Darin McClure

A protester in Laguna Beach last weekend showed up in a yellow hazmat suit with matching surfboard to take a stand against nuclear waste burial at San Onofre. Photo courtesy of Darin McClure

Surfers and environmental activists are making a last-ditch effort to try to protect San Onofre State Beach from becoming a nuclear waste repository for spent fuel, with a protest planned for Huntington Beach Pier on Saturday. A similar gathering last weekend drew hundreds of protesters to Laguna Beach.

Stella, a dog owned by Sonja Biele, stands in front of a sign during a protest against nuclear waste storage from the San Onofre nuclear power plant. The protest was at the Huntington Beach pier on Saturday, November 25, 2017. (Photo by Bill Alkofer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Fifty-year surfer Mark S. Burkhart signs a petition during a protest against nuclear waste storage from the San Onofre nuclear power plant. The protest was the Huntington Beach pier on Saturday, November 25, 2017. (Photo by Bill Alkofer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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Reno Cristobal holds an anti-nuclear sign as Fem Razgnoriz walks by during a protest against nuclear waste storage from the San Onofre nuclear power plant. The protest was at the Huntington Beach pier Saturday, November 25, 2017. (Photo by Bill Alkofer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Tina Toulouse holds a sign during a protest against nuclear waste storage from the San Onofre nuclear power plant. The protest was at the Huntington Beach pier on Saturday, November 25, 2017. (Photo by Bill Alkofer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Bridget Bartlow holds a sign during a protest against nuclear waste storage from the San Onofre nuclear power plant. The protest was at the Huntington Beach pier on Saturday, November 25, 2017. (Photo by Bill Alkofer, Orange County Register/SCNG)



Congressman Dana Rohrabacher looks over a petition presented by Don Ramsey during a protest against nuclear waste storage from the San Onofre nuclear power plant. The protest was at the Huntington Beach pier on Saturday, November 25, 2017. (Photo by Bill Alkofer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Plans to transport the spent fuel to Yucca Mountain in Nevada were taken off the table years ago, and officials haven’t figured out what to do with the nuclear waste other than storing it temporarily on site, in multi-billion-dollar canisters, just a short distance from shore.

In 2015, shortly after the California Coastal Commission gave Southern California Edison the green light to build on-sight storage, the nonprofit group Citizens Oversight filed suit to stop it.

The suit claimed the commission, which must review and approve or disallow seaside projects, failed to adequately evaluate other storage spots or the Holtec system that will entomb the waste. The suit also argues that Southern California Edison, San Onofre’s operator, presented the spot just a few hundred feet from the beach as the only option.

The Coastal Commission said it followed state law and Edison argued that the new dry storage system is an expansion of an already-existing “safe, secure facility to temporarily store the spent nuclear fuel.”

The highly radioactive fuel will be much safer in the steel-and-concrete bunker than in the pools where it currently cools, Edison said. All waste is slated to be in dry storage by 2019.

Edison has little choice here, it argued. The federal government has exclusive jurisdiction over the transport, monitoring and storage of spent nuclear fuel and has the legal obligation to permanently dispose of it – not just from San Onofre, but from every commercial reactor in the nation.

Edison produced electricity at the site for 40 years, creating millions of pounds of radioactive waste. The reactors were shut down in 2012 after steam generators malfunctioned.

In August, Citizens Oversight, SCE and the Coastal Commission struck a deal to take specific steps toward eventually removing nuclear waste from the region. But details about how that might happen remain vague.

Under terms of the settlement, Edison agreed to spend up to $4 million to hire a team of experts in fields such as nuclear engineering, siting, licensing, transportation, and radiation detection to develop plans to relocate San Onofre’s 3.6 million pounds of spent fuel.

One site the team is supposed to consider is the Palos Verde nuclear plant in Arizona, a site where Edison has a financial stake. The team also is supposed to explore temporary storage sites in New Mexico and Texas.

Already, some spent fuel has been sitting in storage bins – cooling for years – at San Onofre. Some experts argue the proposed dry storage, the steel-and-concrete bunkers, offer greater protection against earthquakes, fire, tsunamis and terrorist threats. And getting it into canisters for dry storage by 2019 is the first step toward transferring it off-site when a facility becomes available, proponents argue.

But concerned citizens in Orange County argue the canisters are below standards used around the world, where containers 10- to 19-inches thick are used. The vessels proposed for San Onofre are less than an inch thick and vulnerable to local hazards such as earthquakes and tsunamis, said surfer and opponent Ian Cairns.

“People are kind of tone deaf,” said Cairns, who attended the Laguna Beach protest and plans to speak at the Huntington gathering. “They don’t realize the magnitude of the problem. They are trying to bury the waste 100 feet from the water, in substandard canisters.”

After joining the Laguna Beach protest, Ramsey brought petitions to local surf shops, getting hundreds of signatures in the hopes of rallying fellow surfers to speak out against the nuclear waste burial. An online petition this week garnered an additional 1,400 signatures.

Ramsey hopes the protest Saturday, scheduled for 10 a.m. to noon at the Huntington Beach Pier, will get more people on board to speak out against the waste burial.

“It’s getting down to the wire, we’re getting close to it,” he said. “We have to make this stand.”