Karl Herchenroeder
RW Monitor
01/29/16
Bidding for the estimated $4.4 billion decommissioning contract at San Diego County’s San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station has closed with three suitors emerging.
Maureen Brown, spokeswoman for plant operator Southern California Edison (SCE), confirmed Wednesday that the company is no longer accepting bids. The finalists are Team Holtec, a partnership between AECOM and EnergySolutions, and a team led by Bechtel. Though Brown did not offer any timeline on when SCE might reach a decision, Holtec International Senior Vice President Pierre Paul Oneid said his group anticipates results in mid-2016.
SCE is preparing facility Units 2 and 3 for decontamination and decommissioning. That means that all equipment and structures that contain radioactive contaminants will need to be removed or decontaminated to a level that allows for license termination. Unit 1 was retired in 1992 and placed into SAFSTOR.
SCE retired Units 2 and 3 in June 2013, when replacement steam generator issues proved too expensive to fix. Current plans are for the site to move into decontamination and dismantlement at the same time that spent fuel is moved from the pools to an additional independent spent fuel storage pad required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The selection process gets underway with a series of controversies mounting regarding the plant’s closure.
In December, the California Public Utilities Commission fined SCE nearly $17 million for violations stemming from a 2013 meeting in Poland, where a former company executive allegedly engaged in ex-parte communication with California’s top utility regulator at the time, then-commission President Michael Peevey. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that SCE executive Stephen Pickett met with Peevey to discuss closing an investigation into the 2013 failure at San Onofre and dividing $4.7 billion in premature closure costs between ratepayers and stockholders, among other details. State Attorney General Kamala Harris has opened an investigation into Peevey’s actions.
Meanwhile consumer advocacy group Citizens’ Oversight Projects has filed a lawsuit in an attempt to block a permit allowing for expansion of the plant’s nuclear waste storage. In October, the California Coastal Commission approved the two-decade permit as SCE works to move SONGS’ spent fuel from cooling pools to dry storage by 2019. With about 2,700 spent fuel assemblies on hand, SCE contends it needs as many as 80 more concrete-encased steel canisters in its underground interim storage site. Chief among the plaintiffs’ concerns is that the permit would allow 3.6 million pounds of nuclear waste to be stored 100 feet from the Pacific Ocean shoreline in a densely populated area subject to earthquakes.
Oceanside City Councilmember Jerry Kern has advocated for moving the waste to a Waste Control Specialists facility planned in West Texas. He has urged area lawmakers to support the federal government’s plan to allow the Department of Energy to engage with private companies in storing nuclear waste at consent-based interim storage facilities. House Resolution 3643, introduced by Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), would allow DOE to spend yearly interest from the Nuclear Waste Fund on the storage of spent nuclear fuel beginning in 2016. The fund accumulates about $800 million to $1.5 billion a year.
