Fund Decommission San Onofre Team

See project topics here: Shut San Onofre and Coalition To Decommission San Onofre

The Coalition to Decommission San Onofre (CDSO) continues to be active in our work to decommission San Onofre:

• We are still giddy with delight from the June 7 announcement by Southern California Edison (SCE) that they will permanently shut down and decommission the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS). We must continue to be vigilant as any inattention at this junction will likely result in still more profiteering by SCE, and we continue to be engaged, as described below:
• 2013-03-29 -- CDSO submitted Written Testimony in Phase I of the Investigation into the San Onofre Outage by the CA Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) (I.12-10-013). You can read our testimony here: http://www.copswiki.org/w/pub/Common/M1349/CDSO_OII_Rebuttal_Testimony.pdf
• 2013-05-13 - 2013-05-17 -- CDSO sent four participants to the CPUC Evidentiary Hearings on the Testimony submitted in this 1st Phase of its Investigation into the San Onofre Outage in San Francisco at CPUC HQs.
  • Phase I focuses on the costs resulting from these defective nuclear reactors and how much should ultimately be borne by SCE and SDG&E ratepayers, as well as the effect of this outage on the reliability of our electric service and grid and how effectively the operator SCE communicated with the community about the outage and emergency preparedness. This phase is constrained to 2012 expenses.
  • Ray Lutz attempted to video record the first day of these hearings, but the Administrative Law Judge Melanie Darling violated Lutz's First Amendment rights by not allowing recording of the meeting. You can see this video here. She ruled that the remainder of the meeting will be webcast, again another big win by our team. We will continue to pursue opening up these meetings for public scrutiny as this will help us immensely in our attempts to provide effective oversight. (On the video page you can see our follow up letter from COPS to the CPUC on this issue of recording meetings.)
  • You can also see the entire hearings here. Don' t miss the cross examination when Ray Lutz cornered SCE's Palmisano into admitting that they pursued Unit 2 restart without any regard to the ultimate cost nor was there any prudent review of all options.
• 2013-06-19 -- CDSO participants Martha Sullivan and Ray Lutz attended the California Energy Commission Workshop on Nuclear Energy in Sacramento at their headquarters. This meeting was originally expected to be huge and contentious, but since it occurred after the June 7 shutdown announcement, it turned into a review of the current situation at San Onofre and mostly about the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant and its relation to numerous fault lines, including the newly discovered "Shoreline fault." They continue to study these faults and have an expected date of 2015 when the studies will be completed and perhaps some decisions will be made. Of course, these in-depth studies have no hope of exonerating the plant from the obvious risk and instead amount to delaying tactics, since they continue to operate this plant despite the obvious danger. See the meeting Here.
• The Division of Ratepayer Advocates (DRA) made a motion which asserted that the CPUC should immediately remove costs of San Onofre from the ratebase due to the shutdown, now that it is clear that the plant will never operate again. CDSO replied in support of the Motion, but we went even further by asserting that all of the costs related to the steam generator project are without question the responsibility of SCE and their shareholders and not the ratepayer. Read these documents here: (avail. soon)
• After the Evidentiary Hearing, each party provides briefs which argue their point of view.
  • The CDSO, led by Martha Sullivan, prepared an excellent brief which makes the argument that SCE is fully responsible for the failures, including all 2012 costs. You can read our opening Brief here. (Available Soon)
  • We have a chance to reply to each of the briefs of the other parties. Our reply brief was prepared by Martha Sullivan and reviewed by Ray Lutz, and filed with the CPUC on 2013-07-09. Read it here (available soon).

UPCOMING WORK

The CSDO plans to attend the following two meetings:

• 2013-07-12 -- (Friday) The CPUC is holding a Phase II prehearing conference at their HQ in San Francisco. The CDSO is a party to these proceedings. This is an important meeting because it is the first such meeting after the permanent shutdown of the plant. It is our assertion that we should immediately move to Phase III, which is a reasonableness review of the Steam Generator Replacement Project (SGRP) and by so doing, we hope to show that SCE was responsible for executing this project successfully, and since they did not, all costs related to it should be borne by their shareholder and not by the ratepayer. The other phases (II and IV) then become mostly moot.
• 2013-07-15 -- (Mon) The California Energy Commission (CEC) is holding a workshop at UCLA on post-San Onofre power management in California. THIS IS RELATIVELY CLOSE BY, so attend if you can! Click here for the meeting notice and all the details!

WE are not going to be kept on a leash, so we are looking to our network of supporters for help to cover transportation, housing, meals and copying/other administrative expenses. By bundling these two trips together, we can reduce the overall cost and still cover all the bases.

• Unlike our regulated Utility counterparts, we don't have millions of dollars in ratepayer or shareholder funding for OUR advocacy and we operate very frugally, primarily using our own funds, so your assistance is VERY MUCH APPRECIATED AND ESSENTIAL to our involvement!

Expense Item	Est. Amount
Car expenses/Gas for San Diego to S.F. and to UCLA	$350
Lodging	$400
Meals	$150
Copying/Printing while in Hearings: ($25/day)	$50
TOTAL	$950
Several contributors have stepped forward and have contributed:	$180
Left to our goal:	$770

Can you help us make our goal?

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