San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station's dismantling starts now | Rob Nikolewski

Seven years after the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station officially went offline, the eight-year process of physically dismantling the plant and knocking down the domes that have loomed over the landscape of Camp Pendleton for four decades is about to begin. The plant’s operator, Southern California Edison, has mailed notices to about 12,000 residents in a five-mile radius of the plant that initial work will start no earlier than Feb. 22. The first jobs include erecting staging areas and temporary trailers in the plant’s parking lots and removing materials containing asbestos in the Units 2 and 3 domes. By the time work is complete, all that will remain will be two dry storage facilities housing canisters of used-up nuclear fuel from the days when the plant still produced electricity, a security building with personnel to look over the waste enclosed in casks, a seawall 28 to 30 feet high, a walkway connecting two beaches north and south of the plant and a switch-yard with power lines.