Southern California Edison announced Tuesday that it has selected an AECOM-EnergySolutions partnership as its general contractor for the projected $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 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.
