Judge won’t block plan for disposal of San Onofre waste

A San Diego County judge refused to stop a utility from downloading spent fuel rods from an inactive nuclear power plant, believing it could impose costs on the utility and ratepayers.

Superior Court Judge Timothy B. Taylor on Friday dismissed Citizens Oversight Inc.'s motion to enforce terms of a settlement it reached in 2017 with Southern California Edison Co., which owns San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. Edison had agreed to use commercially reasonable efforts to relocate spent fuel to an off-site storage facility.

In his ruling, Taylor found "Edison has provided ample evidence that it has carried out all of the specific requirements" in the 2017 settlement agreement.

The settlement stems from a 2015 challenge to the Coastal Commission's permit that allowed Edison to bury nearly 3 million pounds of nuclear waste in a seismically-active area on a San Diego County beach near the plant that it shuttered in 2012. Citizens Oversight Inc. v. California Coastal Commission, Southern California Edison Co. 37-2015-00037137 (S.D. Super. Ct., filed Nov. 3, 2015).

In a statement Monday, the company said getting spent nuclear fuel off-site safely is a top priority, and the dry spent fuel storage systems being used at the site continues to meet all regulatory and safety requirements.

"We have formed an advisory team made up of some of the leading experts in spent fuel facility siting, licensing, and transportation and retained a consultant to assist in the development of a strategic plan to remove spent nuclear fuel from San Onofre," said Doug Bauder, Edison's vice president and chief nuclear officer.

Last month, Citizens Oversight counsel Michael J. Aguirre, a partner at Aguirre Severson LLP, filed a motion to enforce the settlement after saying he had information from a whistleblower who claimed Edison was improperly handling the fuel downloading.

The motion also sought to stop Edison from downloading spent fuel and to allow limited discovery to commence along with an evidentiary hearing to determine whether the utility was making commercially reasonable efforts to relocate the fuel to a safer location.

Taylor ruled Citizens Oversight can't make any changes to the 2017 settlement and said Aguirre's requests in his enforcement motion appeared to be "an attempt to gain leverage via delay so that the 2017 agreement can be renegotiated."

Ordering Edison to stop downloading fuel is equal to injunctive relief, which he cannot grant, Taylor wrote. Furthermore, downloading the spent fuel isn't prohibited by the agreement and stopping it would have the opposite result sought by petitioners and likely inflict costs to Edison and its ratepayers, Taylor ruled.