Southern California Edison announced Tuesday that it has selected an AECOM-EnergySolutions partnership as its general contractor for about $1 billion in dismantlement work for the $4.4 billion decommissioning of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS).
The news follows a 10-month selection process in which a Bechtel-Westinghouse team and Team Holtec also competed for the work. The 10-year dismantlement phase of the project is expected to create 600 jobs, according to the SCE announcement. The total cost of decommissioning also covers spent fuel management, radiological decommissioning, and site restoration.
SONGS began operating in 1968, and unit 1 was retired in 1992. SCE retired units 2 and 3 in 2013, after replacement steam generator issues proved too expensive to fix. Decommissioning is expected to wrap up in the early 2030s.
“SCE will maintain strict oversight of the contractor and will continue to engage with the community and all stakeholders during decommissioning,” SCE President Ron Nichols said in a statement Monday, adding that dismantlement will not start until after California regulators finish their environmental review for the project, which is scheduled in 2018.
AECOM is a California-based global infrastructure firm, while Utah-based EnergySolutions is a nuclear waste management and decommissioning company currently decommissioning the Zion Nuclear Power Station in Illinois and the La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor in Wisconsin.
“We are proud to be selected for one of the largest and most technically complex projects in the country, leveraging capabilities across all of our segments to ensure the safe decommissioning of the San Onofre nuclear plant,” AECOM Chairman and CEO Michael Burke said in a statement Monday. “This win is a tremendous accomplishment for our joint venture team with EnergySolutions, and underscores our collective industry-leading expertise within a substantial global nuclear market.”
SCE is also moving forward with plans to consolidate SONGS’ remaining spent nuclear fuel from two cooling ponds into an expanded independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI) on site property near the Pacific coast. About 50 canisters are in place, but SCE claims it needs 73 more canisters to store the remaining fuel. The company expects to complete the plan by 2019.
The California Coastal Commission in October 2015 approved SCE’s storage plans, which drew a lawsuit from Citizens Oversight and Patricia Borchmann, who warned of the dangers of storing fuel in an earthquake-prone area within a tsunami inundation zone and attempted to block SCE’s plan. That case is scheduled for trial on March 30. SCE spokeswoman Maureen Brown said by email Tuesday that the company still expects to complete the storage expansion by 2019.
SCE Requests $302.7M for 2017 Decommissioning Costs
SCE on Tuesday requested that the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) authorize $302.7 million in disbursements from the San Onofre Generating Station decommissioning trust funds for expenses projected in 2017.
The requested disbursements, according to an SCE filing, would cover the following:
- DGC expenses to identify work procedures and specifications, as well as design and procure decommissioning items and materials.
- Completion of the ISFSI pad expansion, manufacturing of spent fuel canisters, a fuel offload campaign; and project oversight.
- A site assessment to enable SCE to surrender the SONGS Mesa site to the U.S. Navy, which owns the entire property.
- And environmental permitting costs, including a California Environmental Quality Act decommissioning review, and planning for a National Environmental Policy Act review.
Based on SCE’s last report filed in March 2016, the decommissioning trust funds for San Onofre units 2 and 3 showed a balance of $3.5 billion through December 2015. The company is expected to file another update with the NRC in March 2017.
Laguna Beach Residents Push for Interim Storage
A group of Laguna Beach, Calif., residents has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to support the Energy Department in creating interim storage for American nuclear waste, which theoretically would expedite removal of spent nuclear fuel from SONGS.
Let Laguna Vote recently forwarded a petition to the agency titled, “NRC: Keep Us Safe From San Onofre Nuclear Waste,” which the regulator responded to in a Dec. 15 letter that was released publicly Friday. The group of residents suggested the NRC work with DOE and the Department of Defense to secure an interim storage location, possibly on a military base or in a sparsely populated area “to store the radioactive waste from SONGS, and require that the waste be moved and safely stored there before decommissioning funds are depleted on site restoration activities.”
NRC Director for the Division of Decommissioning, Uranium Recovery and Waste Programs John Tappert responded to the group, saying the NRC maintains independence from other federal agencies in waste-storage-siting processes but does review applications for waste facilities.
“Therefore, the NRC does not have the authority to mandate that SCE attempt to establish an interim waste storage facility,” Tappert wrote.
The group also requested that the NRC ensure that Southern California Edison be held responsible for safety and security at SONGS, to which Tappert responded that the NRC will do its job as regulator to verify SCE’s responsibilities.
