The parties in the legal battle over the $4.7 billion settlement for the early closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California have selected a mediator as they seek to resolve the case.
The “meet and confer” parties – SONGS’ primary owners Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. and the host of consumer groups challenging the settlement – are scheduled for a conference call with mediator Layn Phillips next Wednesday, according to a status report filed with the California Public Utilities Commission. That would be followed by in-person meetings on June 15, 16, and 23.
Those sessions would come well after the April 28 deadline CPUC set in December for wrapping up the dispute. The parties expect to request an extension to that deadline, their latest filing says.
Under the 2014 settlement, state ratepayers would be on the hook for $3.3 billion of the $4.7 billion in expenses to close the nuclear plant, which shut down permanently in 2013 after the operators determined that two faulty steam generators – one of which had released a small amount of radiation in January 2012 — were too expensive to fix.
The California Public Utilities Commission in April ordered the sides to reconsider the settlement given the earlier finding that the agreement had been discussed in March 2013 behind closed doors in Warsaw, Poland, by then-CPUC President Michael Peevey and then-SCE executive Stephen Pickett. CPUC has already fined the utility nearly $17 million for failing to promptly report that meeting and other ex-parte communications.
The mediation is intended to resolve a lawsuit, now in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, against the settlement, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. Both the court and CPUC would have to sign off on any new settlement.
Southern California Edison on Thursday declined to comment on the mediation.
Attorney Michael Aguirre, who took the legal challenge to the federal appeals court, said both sides understand the other’s positions and are wrestling with a means for resolving the dispute. “No matter which side you’re on it’s a gigantic problem you have to find a solution to,” he said by telephone Friday.
Also this week, SONGS’ owners reported an anticipated downsizing in the arbitration award for the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) steam generators that led to the plant’s closure.
The International Chamber of Commerce’s International Court of Arbitration in early March ordered MHI to pay $125 million to Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric, and the city of Riverside. However, that would be offset by $58 million in legal fees the three SONGS owners were directed to pay to MHI. That left a net of nearly $67 million.
However, MHI intends to ask the arbitration court to correct two “apparent computational errors” in its award that would cut the full amount by $6.6 million, to $60.2 million, according to a filing with CPUC. The SONGS owners have verified the proposed corrections and expect the award amount to be reduced.
Southern California Edison spokeswoman Maureen Brown on Thursday could not say how much of that $60.2 million the utility would collect.
The utility in December announced that a partnership of AECOM and EnergySolutions would be the general contractor for the $4.4 billion SONGS decommissioning. Decontamination and decommissioning is due to start in 2018, with site restoration wrapping up by 2033, according to a 2016 presentation from SCE.
