Southern California Edison (SCE) has decided to permanently retire Units 2 and 3 of its San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS).
Both SONGS units have a capacity of 1,080 MW and have been shut down safely since January 2012. Unit 2 was taken out of service on 9 January 2012, for a planned routine outage. Unit 3 was safely taken offline on 31 January 2012, after station operators detected a small leak in a tube inside a steam generator manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI). Two steam generators manufactured by MHI were installed in Unit 2 in 2009 and two more were installed in Unit 3 in 2010, one of which developed the leak. In connection with the decision, SCE estimates that it will record a charge in the second quarter of between US$450m and US$650m before taxes (US$300m-US$425m after tax), in accordance with accounting requirements.
After months of analysis and tests, SCE submitted a restart plan to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in October 2012. SCE proposed to safely restart Unit 2 at a reduced power level (70%) for an initial period of approximately five months.
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