San Onofre: Why should consumers foot the $3.1 billion bill for flawed plant?

Environmental and consumer groups got the best news about San Onofre in September since the troubled nuclear plant was shut permanently in June 2013.

Mike Florio, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) lead commissioner on San Onofre, announced that “big changes” were needed in a proposed settlement that would dump on utility customers the entire $3.1 billion economic loss from shutting the plant a decade earlier than planned. Florio said the settlement must be revised to make it significantly more favorable to consumers.

The settlement proposal had been presented to the CPUC at a hearing in mid-June, endorsed by its staff and by persons claiming to be ratepayer advocates. But in fact this “solution” was the outcome of a weak negotiating team using a flawed process.

At the hearing the Angeles Chapter protested the proposal, and we followed up with over 3,000 letters by Chapter members to CPUC Commissioners. These letters asked the CPUC, since when does the American economic system make consumers, rather than shareholders, pay for a company’s management errors and lapses?

Cynics said our letters would have no effect because CPUC acceptance of the proposed settlement was a done deal and any other input was just for show. Florio proved the cynics wrong. He also confirmed the validity of our approach, which it to organize expressions of public concern on a mass scale with the goal of making it as difficult as possible for decision-makers to do the wrong thing. When they do the right thing, we publicly commend them.

The CPUC situation was dramatic because Florio, with the backing of other Commissioners, refused to accept his own staff’s recommendation that was supposedly endorsed by ratepayer advocates. For us, this was the second big victory of Angeles Chapter “people power” at San Onofre.

History repeats itself

Back in May 2013 the shutdown of San Onofre was hanging by a thread. Staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) had just recommended approval of Southern California Edison’s request for fast-track restart of the plant to test its failed steam generator system prior to resuming full operations. All the NRC commission had to do was back its own staff and San Onofre would be back in operation.

At that point, Friends of the Earth attorneys found an NRC rule saying such a test was an “experiment” requiring a license amendment. That meant a full hearing process with an administrative law judge and independent experts giving sworn testimony.

The Angeles Chapter followed up swiftly with some 3,500 letters urging the NRC not to cut corners, and warning of the damage to its public credibility if it okayed fast-track restart rather than requiring hearings.

In a crucial two-week period that followed, the Commission made no move to approve its staff recommendation. Edison threw in the towel, saying it could not carry the plant’s cost over months of process. That was the end of San Onofre as an operating nuclear plant.

As the saying goes, victory has a thousand parents – and we were surely among them. On the two big San Onofre issues – plant operating safety and economic costs caused by management errors – Chapter members have spoken out with big effect, proving that it matters to walk the talk, stay on the case, and as Churchill said, to “never, never give up.”

Glenn Pascall is chair of the Sierra Club Angeles Chapter Task Force on San Onofre.