RW Monitor
7/31/2015
IN THE INDUSTRY
The California Public Utilities Commission approved late last week the use of close to $400 million from Southern California Edison’s San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station’s decommissioning trust fund. Those funds, according to local reports, will help cover the costs that incurred while shutting down the plant in the last two years, including employee severances and work done to prepare the site for retirement. SCE must obtain CPUC approval before any funds from the trust fund can be expended. According to SCE’s Post-Shutdown Decommissioning Activities Report (PSDAR), the estimated costs and planned timeline for the project include a $4.4 billion total estimate price tag and a start date for major decommissioning activities to begin in 2016. The first major effort, SCE has said, will be the transfer of spent nuclear fuel to dry cask storage, which the company hopes to have completed by 2019.