San Onofre nuclear power plant gets a new boss - The San Diego Union-Tribune

San Onofre nuclear power plant gets a new boss - The San Diego Union-Tribune

San Onofre nuclear power plant gets a new boss

Doug Bauder is retiring and will be replaced by a Westinghouse executive

The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station will have a new boss by the end of this month after Southern California Edison announced that Doug Bauder is retiring as chief nuclear officer and vice president of decommissioning.

Bauder’s replacement is Fred Bailly, a 25-year veteran in the nuclear industry who comes from Westinghouse Electric Company, where he has served as vice president of decommissioning services since June 2021.

The change at the top comes as the former generating station at San Onofre, known as SONGS for short, is being torn down.

SONGS has not produced electricity since 2012 after a leak in a steam generator tube led to its closing. The plant is now being decommissioned and is in the fourth year of a $4.5 billion dismantlement project that will take roughly eight years to complete. About 1.1 billion pounds of material is expected to be removed from the site.

“We are at a point in the project where a transition makes sense,” Bauder said in a statement, “and Fred has the decommissioning expertise and leadership skills to lead the team across the finish line.” Bauder’s last day at Edison will be Oct. 31.

Bailly said he is “looking forward to working with our (Southern California Edison) team and our contracting partners as we continue the current phase of decommissioning the San Onofre site over the next several years.”

The plant’s two distinctive domes, each 190 feet high, are expected to be gradually taken down starting at the end of 2026 or early 2027.

Bauder served as San Onofre plant manager from 2009 to 2013 and then returned in November 2018, a few months after a 45-ton canister filled with spent nuclear fuel assemblies almost fell as it was being lowered into a storage cavity at the north end of the plant.

Edison officials described the incident as a “serious near-miss” but insisted the workers and the public were never in danger if the canister had fallen. A special inspection by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission concluded the plant failed “to establish a rigorous process to ensure adequate procedures, training and oversight guidance” and fined Edison $116,000.

Some 3.55 million pounds of spent radioactive fuel from the time when SONGS produced electricity is currently stored in 73 canisters that have been lowered into vertical cavities at the storage site, behind a seawall a little more than 100 feet from the Pacific. Another 50 canisters of waste rest horizontally nearby.

As is the case for the roughly 89,000 metric tons of waste that has accumulated at nuclear power plants in 35 states around the country, the canisters sit at SONGS because the federal government has not built a repository where the spent fuel can go.

In June, U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm came to SONGS and announced the Biden administration will spend $26 million to engage communities who may be interested in accepting some of the spent fuel, at least on an interim basis.

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