By Wayne Barber
The two largest utility owners of the retired San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in California this week said they should not be required to stop collecting ratepayer revenue in the contested 2014 settlement for the plant’s early closure.
Southern California Edison (SCE) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) both filed legal arguments Wednesday opposing a June 19 motion filed with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) by ratepayer Ruth Henricks and the Coalition to Decommission San Onofre (CDSO).
The settlement would require utility customers to pay $3.3 billion of the closure costs for the nuclear power plant’s premature shutdown in 2013. However, CPUC reopened the settlement in May 2016 after determining that former CPUC President Michael Peevey had conducted ex-parte communications on the matter with an executive for SONGS’ majority owner Southern California Edison in 2013.
While the settlement remains in contention, attorneys for Henricks and CDSO argue the nuclear plant’s owners (the two utilities and the city of Riverside) should not collect associated ratepayer revenue. However, the utilities both argue the petitioners’ motion would bypass the mechanism already set up by the commission last December for the parties to “meet and confer” on possible changes to the settlement. That process currently has an Aug. 15 deadline.
“[T]he Motion asks the Commission to take a substantive action which presumes (1) that the meet and confer process will be unsuccessful, (2) the Commission will invalidate the current settlement, and (3) the Commission will set new rates before it conducts any inquiry into the reasonableness of SCE’s conduct. For these reasons, and as discussed further below, the relief sought by the Motion is both inconsistent with the December 13 Ruling,” Southern California Edison said in its filing with CPUC.
The utilities also said the June motion effectively just restates a still-pending motion filed with the commission in February by CDSO.
Southern California Edison said it has met the terms of the settlement as they stand, under which customers would receive $1.6 billion in refunds. It also denied that it ever predicted that SONGS’ owners would win more than $5 billion in an arbitration case against Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) over the faulty steam generators that forced SONGS’ shutdown. The award turned out to be only $125 million, and the plant’s owners were required to pay MHI’s $58 million in legal fees.
“The suggestion that the Utilities should bear SONGS costs because the panel did not agree with their claim that MHI engaged in fraud is a non sequitur,” SCE said. “The finding that MHI did not engage in fraud in no way establishes that SCE acted imprudently.”
For its part, SDG&E also said that foes of the settlement failed to show they will suffer irreparable harm if a revenue collection stay is not granted at this point. If the CPUC eventually agrees with the petitioners, a refund can be ordered, the utility added.
SDG&E added that petitioners have not demonstrated that the ex-parte communication affected the negotiations. Peevey was only one of five members of the commission, which unanimously approved the settlement, the San Diego utility said.
SONGS Waste Talks Continue
Separately, a state judge on Wednesday gave parties in a lawsuit over storage of spent nuclear fuel from the San Onofre plant until Sept. 8 to successfully wrap up settlement talks in the case, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. If they cannot do so, the lawsuit will go to trial. Superior Court Judge Judith Hayes ruled.
Attorneys for all parties in the lawsuit – plaintiffs Patricia Borchmann and Citizens Oversight and defendants Southern California Edison and the California Coastal Commission – jointly requested the extension to a final hearing date that had been set for July 14.
“Sufficient progress has been made with respect to settlement such that, with additional time, an agreement may be reached, which would resolve this matter,” according to their petition.
The plaintiffs sued in November 2015 to overturn the Coastal Commission approval of expansion of SONGS’ spent fuel storage pad. Southern California Edison said the facility must be expanded so that the remainder of the plant’s spent fuel can be moved into dry storage. While the utility says its storage system would be safe and secure, critics worry about placing nearly 3.6 million pounds of nuclear waste within 100 feet of the Pacific Ocean shoreline in a region given to earthquakes.
The possible terms of a settlement have not been made public. But plaintiffs’ attorney Michael Aguirre has argued for moving the spent fuel to another, more distant location such as the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in Arizona. Southern California Edison is a part owner of the nuclear plant.
Meanwhile, all stakeholders are waiting to see how the federal government will meet its legal mandate to remove spent fuel from SONGS and all other nuclear power plants around the nation. The Department of Energy’s planned geologic repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada has been in limbo for years while the Obama administration looked for other means of storage. But the project has found new life in the Trump administration, which wants to resume licensing activities for the facility at DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Current and pending legislation in Congress is also intended to promote development of both temporary sites to consolidate the waste and then the permanent repository.
