Southern California Edison customers, including those in Malibu, may pay hundreds of millions dollars in shutdown costs for a San Onofre nuclear plant, according to a letter published Monday.
Edison published a letter explaining the closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station as a full-page ad in Southern California newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register, defending the closures to customers. It said Edison is trying to recover costs from both insurers and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, who designed and manufactured the generators that leaked radioactive coolant, leading to the plant closure.
The costs “could be significant,” and any costs not recovered by insurance and from Mitsubishi may be shared by its 4.9 million Southern California customers, Edison said.
The letter also explained how energy costs are determined.
“Our prices are set by our regulator, the Public Utilities Commission,” the letter said. “Our rates allow us to recover our operating costs, without any mark-up or profit…if a utility asset must be retired before the end of its expected life, the utility recovers from customers its reasonable investment costs.”
The California Public Utilities Commission will now determine how the costs of the closure will be addressed.
Edison announced the closure of the plant in June. The closure left more than $1 billion in costs, the Los Angeles Times reported. The plant had been closed for more than a year after a tube in a new steam generator system leaked a small amount of radioactive steam, leading to the discovery that tubes were wearing out at unusual rates.
The closed plant had cost Edison about $800 million when the closure was announced, both for the plant’s ongoing operation costs and the cost of replacement power, which the LA Times reported had reached over $500 million in June.
Southern California Edison services 4.9 million customers in a 50,000-square-mile area, including parts of Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties.