San Onofre Plan Generates Heated Debate : Utilities: Proposal to close plant 15 years ahead of schedule is expected to draw opposition from SCE, labor union at hearing tonight.

State officials seeking the early closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station will present their case at a public hearing here tonight, with fierce opposition expected from the utility company that owns the plant and the labor union representing its 2,500 workers.

Many of those employees who want to protect their jobs live in South County or northern San Diego County. Union officials argue that the plant represents an economic benefit of more than $250 million a year to surrounding communities.

For weeks, the Utility Workers Union of America has lobbied city councils, claiming that closing the plant by 1998--15 years ahead of schedule--would be another crippling blow to an area already ravaged by recession.

And last week, in a show of support for the union and Southern California Edison, which owns the plant, the San Clemente City Council voted to support keeping San Onofre open.

Tonight’s meeting will begin at 7 in the San Clemente City Council chambers. Another public hearing is set for 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Fullerton High School. Both hearings will be conducted by an administrative law judge, with a final decision by the state Public Utilities Commission expected by the end of the year.

Opened in 1967, the San Onofre plant now supplies 12% of the power used by customers of Southern California Edison, which serves residents throughout the Southland.

Southern California Edison owns about 75% of the plant, which features two huge domes visible along the coast south of San Clemente. San Diego Gas & Electric owns 20%, with utilities in Anaheim and Riverside owning less than 5%.

Opponents say the cost of operating the plant is far too high and could easily be reduced by turning to alternative energy sources, including solar power, natural gas and even agricultural waste.

“We could save the ratepayers more than $1 billion over the remaining life of the plant,” which is scheduled to close in the year 2013, said Robert Kinosian, spokesman for the Division of Ratepayer Advocates, a department of the PUC.

DRA attorney Irene Moosen said the division reports to the PUC commissioner but acts solely on behalf of ratepayers at hearings where utility rates are determined.

Kinosian’s group encountered stiff opposition when the future of San Onofre was last discussed, in 1992. The outcome of that round of hearings was the closure of Unit 1, the oldest of the plant’s three operating reactors.

“By forcing the closure of Unit 1, we saved ratepayers $130 million a year,” Kinosian said.

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But Southern California Edison officials argue that merely converting to other forms of energy, such as gas-powered facilities, would cost far more than would be saved by shutting down San Onofre 15 years early.

Union officials point to the economic damage from the loss of jobs.

“A lot of the jobs involved, such as health physics technician or nuclear control operator, would not be transferable to other industries,” said Carl Wood, business agent for Local 246 of the Utility Workers Union of America. “Our annual payroll of $120 million would be gone, wiped out, eliminated,” Wood said. “You’d have have a half-a-billion-dollar loss in business activity in Orange and San Diego counties alone.”

Kinosian counters by saying that millions of dollars in savings would more than offset the loss of jobs at San Onofre or the money its workers would spend in surrounding communities.

“Sure, it would take away from employees at the power plant,” he said, “but the enormous savings would go to ratepayers, and every other business in the region would be dramatically better off because of lower electric bills.”

Units 2 and 3 at San Onofre cost as much as $600 million a year to operate, Kinosian said, whereas alternative forms of energy, such as gas-powered plants, some of which were mothballed years ago, would account for the savings he envisions.

Joe Wambold, manager of business and finance for Edison’s nuclear department, said the company plans to show during public hearings that Kinosian’s group is “way off base” in making such claims.

In converting to new or different forms of energy, Wambold said, the capital outlay attached to start-up costs “manages to defeat Kinosian’s argument single-handedly.”

The Alliance for Survival, an environmental group based in Santa Ana, plans to speak in support of closing the plant early, citing high costs and the ongoing risk of a nuclear accident, such as those at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979 and at the Chernobyl plant in the former Soviet Union in 1986.

But officials for Southern California Edison say the conversion to other forms of energy, such as natural gas, would contribute to air pollution. Nuclear power, they argue, is free of air pollution.