San Onofre Nuclear Generating station
| San Onofre Nuclear Generating station | |
 A Whelen WPS-2810 that's part of the system. This particular unit is located in Dana Point, and replaced a Model 120. Photo Credit to Duderocks5539. | |
| Type | Nuclear |
|---|---|
| Location | San Clemente/San Onofre, California. |
| Date installed | Original system: 1981-1982 Current system: 2005-2006 |
| Status | Inactive (Almost all sirens removed) |
| Testing dates | 3rd week of October on a Wednesday annually for three, three minute alerts. |
| Testing times | 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM |
The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) Sirens are a network of 50 sirens located within a 10-mile radius of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station located in San Clemente, California. There are 24 WPS-2810 , and 26 WPS-2806, sirens. These sirens are activated by the four Jurisdictions the sirens are placed in, which is San Juan Capistrano, Dana Point, San Clemente, and MCAS Camp Pendelton. The system was lasted tested fully on October 15th, 2014 due to SONGS being decommissioned, and the NRC not requiring full tests anymore. So after that, the system has only been booped/growl tested in each jurisdiction one by one every June from June 2015 to June 2018 since the plant was still in charge of them, and had to make sure they were still working in case the cities needed to use them for other emergencies. But in late 2018, it was announced that SONGS will no longer be in charge of the system after June 30th, 2019. The cities were given the option to keep them and maintain and test them for themselves shortly after the plant announced their plan with the sirens, but none decided to keep them, and they want them removed, so because of this, the plant did not do boop tests for June 2019. On july 1st, 2019, all the sirens were deactivated, and a few months later in December 2019, they were gradually removed. This is what will happen now, all 9 sirens located in San Juan Capistrano are being completely removed, including their poles, but the ones that have street lights on their poles will be the only poles that remain, along with the ones mounted on electrical line poles to support the existing electrical lines. Dana Point will be keeping 7 out of the 8 sirens, with one being removed completely along with its pole, the other 7 will remain, but the Whelens are being replaced with different sirens that will bolted on the existing SONGS poles which originally supported the Model 120s and STL-10s, and also the Whelen 2810s and 2806s. As of December 2019, the poles remain empty with no siren or equipment mounted on them, but new sirens will be up on the poles within a few months, and they will be used for emergencies such as tsunamis. San Clemente is doing the same thing as San Juan Capistrano, except San Clemente has 19 sirens, (The most sirens out of any other city in the 10-mile radius of SONGS.) They will only be keeping poles that have street lights on them, and poles that support electrical lines. MCAS Camp Pendelton will be keeping their 10, and will be tied in with their system of Cooper WAVES sirens. So you can say only 10 SONGS sirens are remaining, with others being the poles the sirens once stood on with street lights or electrical lines. And 7 SONGS poles that will remain completely intact and will support new sirens that will be used by Dana Point.
Most sirens in the system ran on 435 HZ ESC-2020s, but around 2012, some had their 2020 cabinets ungraded to 2030 logic boards and are 560 HZ. This plant used to have Model 120 and STL-10 Sirens, that were gradually replaced by the Whelens starting in November 2005, and completed in February/March 2006. Last test of the old system before replacement was October 26th, 2005. And last test of the current system before not being fully tested anymore was October 15th, 2014.