California’s Oldest Nuclear Unit to Shut : Utilities: First of three generators at San Onofre has lost efficiency. Despite objections, PUC allows owners to continue recovering costs.
California’s oldest commercial nuclear generator--the landmark Unit 1 concrete cylinder at San Onofre’s beachside--will shut down permanently late this year in the face of diminished efficiency and uncertain costs to keep the 23-year-old plant operating.
But even as the oldest of the three nuclear power plants near San Clemente goes dark as it depletes its last fill-up of uranium fuel, Southern California ratepayers will still absorb its costs for another four years.
Under an agreement blessed Tuesday by the state Public Utilities Commission, the two utilities that own the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station will be allowed to recover from ratepayers the $460 million--plus interest--that they have sunk into the plant and not yet recouped.
The average utility customer will pay about 75 cents additionally per month over the next four years to reimburse the utilities for the cost of Unit 1. The charge prompted critics on Wednesday to complain that they’re being unfairly stuck with the utilities’ failed investment.
“The PUC is making a massive giveaway to the utility companies and their investors by saddling the ratepayer with the entire future costs of their failed venture,” said Lyn Harris Hicks, spokeswoman for an environmental group called Guard. “No other industry is so protected when its venture fails.”
The executive director of the San Diego-based Utility Consumers Action Network said he wasn’t delighted by the PUC’s settlement but would grin and bear it.
“The settlement makes the best of a bad situation,” said Michael Shames. “(It) was fair, given the political makeup of the commission.
“The whole experience of San Onofre is akin to when your least favorite in-laws finally leave town. You’re glad they’re going--but still wish they had never come in the first place, because of the cost and trauma they caused you.”
The PUC approved the closure plan and utility payoff after the commission’s ratepayers advocacy division argued that San Onofre Unit 1 was no longer cost-effective.
Southern California Edison Co., which owns 80% of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, and San Diego Gas & Electric Co., which owns the balance, argued that Unit 1 was still a dependable workhorse despite its years and deserved to stay operating--even at a cost of $125 million or more in upgrades and improvements it faced later this year.
Southern California Edison serves most of Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties, and much of Los Angeles County--with the exception of the city of Los Angeles. Its range extends north through much of Santa Barbara County.
The 450-megawatt unit, which began producing electricity in 1968 as California’s second venture into commercial nuclear power, was designed to operate until the year 2004. (The state’s first on-line nuclear power plant, a small generator in Humboldt County, already is closed.)
During its first 11 years, San Onofre’s Unit 1 generally worked at more than 70% efficiency, providing about 2.5% of Edison’s power needs, and 3% of SDG&E;’s.
But since 1980, the plant was inoperative for extended periods as its owners pumped in more than $300 million in retrofitting costs and other repairs to meet new seismic and safety standards mandated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
In recent years, its efficiency has slipped to between 50% and 60%. PUC staff officials had estimated that to keep Unit 1 on line, ratepayers would pay between $250 million and $750 million in additional costs. It would be cheaper, the PUC’s ratepayers advocacy office argued, to shut it down, buy power elsewhere and rely on San Onofre’s two newer, dome-shaped generators, built in 1984 and 1985, to pick up the slack.
The closure of Unit 1 will cost the jobs of about 500 employees--from maintenance workers to high-tech experts--under contract to Edison.
