When You Create Problems: Is Enough Money Set Aside to Tear Down San Onofre?

Here’s a fun one for you: Is there enough money set aside to pay for both the tear-down of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station and another 30 or so years of radioactive waste storage on that scenic bluff over the blue Pacific?

This, friends, is one of the question bubbles bobbing over Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric’s latest request to pull more than a half-billion dollars from San O’s decommissioning trust funds to pay bills. The California Public Utilities Commission must approve the move, and critics are protesting.

The investor-owned utilities are significantly understating the length of time that spent nuclear fuel will stay at San Onofre and the additional costs that will cause, said a protest lodged by the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility. See, the utilities’ estimate assumes the waste will start moving out in less than a decade.

“We question their continued reliance on the assumption that by 2034 there will be some interim ‘somewhere else’ place for the waste to go,” said David Weisman, executive director for the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility Legal Fund. “We don’t find evidence of that. And the longer it stays, the more costs go up.”