Decision on San Onofre plant restart delayed again
The San Onofre nuclear plant, south of San Clemente. Register file photo.
By Pat Brennan | Orange County Register
A decision by federal regulators on whether to allow the restart of one of San Onofre's shuttered nuclear reactors has been pushed back at least to mid-June.
The chairwoman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Allison Macfarlane, said last week that "a decision on restart won't happen until the end of June, certainly after the middle of June. It may get pushed back later."
On Monday, the agency's website listed the expected date for a decision on restart as "to be determined."
The plant's operator, Southern California Edison, said in a statement Monday that it accepted an earlier assessment by Macfarlane of a mid-June time frame, both for the utility company's request for an amendment to its operating license and for a final decision on the commission's preliminary finding of "no significant hazards" associated with the restart proposal.
Edison officials had previously expressed their hope that a restart decision could come by June 1, in time for the higher power demand that accompanies hot weather.
Commission officials made no new statements about the potential timing of a public hearing on the restart proposal.
Activists who oppose the restart say the hearing should come before a restart decision is made.
A panel of three administrative judges, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, ruled last week that the restart proposal requires a public hearing. The ruling was considered a victory by activists, including the group Friends of the Earth.
But commission officials have previously said a restart decision could come before a hearing if the "no significant hazards" finding becomes final.
The public-comment period for the preliminary no-hazards finding closed Thursday, according to the agency's website. A 60-day period to request a license amendment hearing closes June 17, and a separate, public meeting on San Onofre in Southern California was estimated to be planned for late June.
The California Public Utilities Commission also is investigating the extended outage at the nuclear plant and its causes to determine whether ratepayers should be reimbursed for related costs. A decision could come in July.
Edison has proposed restarting San Onofre's Unit 2 reactor at 70 percent power, then shutting it down for evaluation after five months.
The lower-power restart is expected to curb vibrations believed to have caused unexpected wear among thousands of metal tubes inside the nuclear plant's four steam generators, two for each reactor.
The worn tubes in the generators, built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Japan and installed between 2009 and early 2011 in a $671 million operation, were discovered after the shutdown of the plant's Unit 3 reactor on Jan. 31, 2012. A small release of radioactive gas prompted the shutdown.
Unit 2 had been shut down earlier that month for routine maintenance; the unexpected wear was found after inspections of steam generators in both reactor units.
Nuclear regulators said a decision on whether to reopen the plant's shuttered nuclear reactors has been pushed back to at least mid-June.
Contact the writer: 714-796-7865 or pbrennan@ocregister.com
Pat Brennan