Edison to Pay San Onofre Fine of $180,000

The owners of the San Onofre nuclear power plant have agreed to pay a $180,000 fine for violations of federal regulations that led to a serious accident in one of the plant’s reactors last year.

David Barron, a spokesman for Southern California Edison Co., said the company has accepted responsibility for the Nov. 21 accident, which kept reactor Unit 1 shut down for more than eight months.

The incident ended with no injuries, no release of radioactivity and no danger to the public.

The fine is the highest ever paid by Edison for an accident at San Onofre.

‘Event Did Happen’

“Edison has chosen not to contest it since the event did happen, did involve a potential safety matter and has resulted in Edison and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission taking a number of steps to prevent this from happening again in the future,” Barron said.

The three violations involved the breakdown of the cooling system, the failure of the utility’s test program to ensure that the system’s valves would work, and the failure of Edison workers to fully investigate a problem they discovered in one of the valves.

An NRC report on the incident earlier this year concluded that maintenance records for the valves that failed were either missing or lacked specificity, that testing records were inconsistent and that the testing procedure used on the valves “was not rigorous.”