CHEAPER TO SCRAP SAN ONOFRE THAN RESTART IT

San Onofre: Restart plan would cost customers $150M more than replacement power; Edison financials show keeping reactor shut down three times cheaper than startup

Adam Russell, March 22, 2013 (Friends of the Earth)

“…[After both reactors at the crippled San Onofre nuclear power plant being offline for 14 months, restarting one of them] this summer would cost Southern California Edison’s customers three times as much as keeping it shut down and buying [readily available] power from other sources, according to an independent analysis commissioned by Friends of the Earth.

“In an emergency motion filed today with the California Public Utilities Commission, Friends of the Earth said Edison’s own figures show that restarting reactor Unit 2 and running it at partial power for five months, as the utility proposes, would cost almost $150 million more than buying readily available replacement power on the open market. If Edison can’t justify that cost, the group said, the PUC should rule at once that Edison cannot pass those costs on to consumers, which could lead to Edison deciding to keep it closed…”

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“The analysis…found that Edison’s publicly reported cost of operating San Onofre in 2012 was $640 million -- an amount charged to customers even though the plant produced electricity for just one month. The cost of replacement power was $175 million for the year. Scaling Edison’s figures to five months of operation shows that operating Unit 2 would cost about $214 million, versus $66 million for replacement power…

“…Friends of the Earth asked the PUC to…[to require of Edison] a cost-benefit analysis for its restart plan within two weeks…[T]he issue is an emergency because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has indicated that it could rule as early as May whether to allow Edison to restart the reactor and run it at 70 percent power for five months -- an untested experiment that could further damage the plant’s severely worn steam generators -- this damage already caused the release of radioactive steam in January 2012…”

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