Rep. Levin Pushes Bipartisan Bill as 5 States Eye San Onofre Waste

Eight years after entering Congress with a pledge to remove spent nuclear fuel from the Southern California coastline, U.S. Rep. Mike Levin (D-San Juan Capistrano) outlined new bipartisan legislative and rail-transport milestones for the shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, according to CalMatters reports published Monday by the Mountain View Voice and The Almanac.

5 Prospective Host States and 700 Million Tons of Decommissioning Debris

San Onofre ceased power generation in 2013 following the failure of a newly installed steam generator, and crews began dismantling the plant in 2020—removing 700 million tons of construction material while transferring spent nuclear fuel rods from cooling pools into steel-and-concrete dry casks on the beach beside Camp Pendleton and active seismic faults:

• Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana & Idaho: Because the federal government missed its 1998 statutory obligation to accept commercial nuclear waste and former President Barack Obama canceled Nevada's Yucca Mountain repository in 2010, Levin is backing the Department of Energy's Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses initiative. 5 states—Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Idaho—have applied as prospective hosts for facilities that could recycle part of the fuel and store the remainder by the late 2030s, following consent-based models in Finland and Canada.
• Bipartisan Spent Fuel Prioritization Act: Pending before the House Energy and Commerce Committee according to Levin's 2026 San Onofre report, Levin's Spent Fuel Prioritization Act—co-sponsored by Republican Reps. Darrell Issa of San Diego and Young Kim of Orange County—would prioritize moving waste from high-population seismic zones near military bases like San Onofre, while companion bills would require storage casks to last 100 years instead of 40 years.

$33 Million, 12-Axle Atlas Railcar System Set for First Virginia-to-Idaho Haul

To transport heavy nuclear casks once a destination is licensed, the Department of Energy spent 10 years and $33 million developing the 12-axle Atlas Railcar System, which is equipped with real-time monitoring sensors and rated to carry nearly 225,000 kilograms of spent nuclear fuel. Levin reported that the Atlas train will complete final testing next year and transport its first spent fuel rods from Virginia to Idaho.