Southern California Edison said the plant is 84% dismantled and will be mostly dust by the end of 2028, save a task or two that might creep into early 2029. Work now focuses on removing large components from inside those iconic domes, as well as shipping debris off site, officials told the volunteer San Onofre Community Engagement Panel last week.

The domes will start coming down next year.

Of course, San Onofre’s nuclear waste will remain on that bluff over the blue Pacific long after most everything else is gone — i.e, until the federal government figures out where to put it. That prospect creates tremendous angst among activists who worry about the degradation of storage canisters over time. The feds, after all, aren’t known for swift action: Radioactive waste was supposed to start exiting nuke plants in, er, 1998.

Enter now a fresh technology that the U.S. Department of Energy might use at San Onofre. The feds are considering San O for a demonstration project using “guided wave ultrasonic monitoring,” Edison said — technology that’s currently used to keep an eye on hard-to-access pipelines would also monitor the condition of spent fuel canisters.

Unlike the monitoring technology that Edison currently uses — including robots that crawl over canisters and measure the depth of scratches, etc. — guided wave technology doesn’t return a numerical reading or a thickness measure, said engineer Michael Bryson. Rather, it would allow Edison to screen large surface areas of the canisters for change, loss, imperfection, defects.

Why is San Onofre in the running for this tech? Because it’s the only utility with a test canister in its dry storage systems, Bryson said. Its test canister does not contain nuclear waste, but is heated to mimic containers that do, allowing for easier inspections of how the canister holds up without the worries of radiation. Final word on the new tech’s use locally is expected soon.

It’s unclear if a new inspection tool would do much to ease worried minds, but critics aren’t enamored with the inspection systems in place now. Gary Hendrick of San Clemente Green has been calling on Edison to release photos of scratched canisters that were taken by its inspection robots, something Edison hasn’t been eager to do. Why? Because when technical questions arise at other plants, experts explain and folks move on. Here, officials say, expertise is often rejected and misinformation often spreads.

However, Edison is considering releasing all the inspection photos, though it’s unclear precisely when that decision might be made. An educational seminar on San Onofre’s spent fuel storage systems and efforts to relocate the waste is planned for 5:30 p.m. Oct. 16, though, so we expect it might come before that. The seminar will be held online via Microsoft Teams, and in real life at San Clemente Casino, 140 Avenida Pico.

Other news to note

Repairs to the pedestrian walkway are coming and will last for four to five months, including restacking rocks and replacing the retaining wall. Heavy equipment work will happen at night, but rocks will be restacked during the day at low tide. The walkway will be closed for about four weeks. Important note: The retaining wall for the walkway is not the same thing as the seawall protecting the plant, which is in good condition, Edison’s Ron Pontes said.

A portion of gunite concrete covering the bluff gave way on Aug. 7. No one was hurt, and bluffs beyond the immediate area were found to be in good condition.

Small amounts of tritium were detected in water at the site last year, but monitoring shows that levels are dropping, albeit slowly, Pontes said.

Forty-six of the site’s 62 structures have been demolished, and more than 526 million pounds of crushed concrete, steel and debris have been shipped offsite via 2,062 rail cars.

Activists regularly demand that local governments do more to protest the “beachside nuclear waste dump” at San Onofre. That, unfortunately, is the federal government’s purview. Spent Fuel Solutions — a coalition of local governments, businesses and activists — exists to pressure the feds into finally taking some action.

The sooner San O’s waste can be moved from an earthquake zone near 8 million people, the better.