A hearing has been set for April 5 on a motion to dismiss a California watchdog group’s lawsuit against storage of spent reactor fuel at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS).
Public Watchdogs has no standing to sue in the matter, among several breakdowns in its case, SONGS primary owners Southern California Edison (SCE) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) said in their Jan. 26 motion.
The utilities plan on holding about 3.5 million pounds of spent fuel on dry-storage pads at SONGS until off-site disposal facilities are available. Used fuel from reactor Unit 1 is already in dry storage, while SCE is in the process of moving the remainder of the radioactive waste from wet storage.
El Cajon-based Public Watchdogs in November filed its lawsuit in U.S. District Court for Southern California, against the utilities, the federal government, the Navy and Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, and the Department of Defense. It argued the 1963 federal legislation that created an easement to build SONGS on U.S. Navy land in San Diego County did not authorize spent fuel storage there, and that the situation as it stands represents harm to the group, its members, and the general public. The lawsuit seeks a prohibition on spent fuel storage at the site.
In response, SCE and SDG&E said Public Watchdogs has no legal standing in the matter because it cannot demonstrate any “cognizable injury-in-fact” from the spent fuel storage and has no interest in the land easement. In addition, the 1963 legislation offers no private right of action that would allow for the claim, according to their motion. Finally, the federal defendants are immune from suit, but the case cannot proceed without them and so must be dismissed, the utilities said.
The federal defendants have not yet filed their own response to the lawsuit. Cory Briggs, the attorney representing Public Watchdogs, could not immediately be reached for comment Monday.
